Each week I share our favourite links on my twitter, and then collate them into a blog post for easy reference. This is a big lot of links, so make sure you get a cuppa and an hour up your sleeve to do some reading.
Tweet of the Week
I really enjoyed reading Captive Animals Act Smarter. It looks at reasons why captive animals test ‘smarter’ on some tasks. An interesting read.
Just because the puppies have left our homes doesn’t mean that we’re no longer involved in their new lives! We are always available to our puppy buyers to help them with any problems they may have, or just offer advice. We have had puppy buyers contact us with vaccination queries, toilet training advice, feeding advice, and just to share lovely stories about their puppies. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.
“Douglas” (was “Jakkalberry”) the sleepy cowboy puppy.
“Boomer” kept his name in his new home.
A quick, fun and informative info graphic to share today. I hope you learn something new!
Puppy Development graphic created by Matt Beswick for Pet365. Click here to view the full post.
For those who have read my about me page, you won’t be surprised to learn that I have always been into dogs and their training. As a student at school, I always tried to make my assignments about dogs where possible.
I remember doing Stage 2 Psychology in school, and how immensely easy learning theory was. I was doing this already when I was training dogs! We had an oral presentation on three aspects of learning (classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and modelling), and I chose to base mine on dogs.
While classical conditinoinng and operant conditioning was easy to talk about, I had difficulty finding examples of modelling in dogs. To this day, I still struggle to find examples.
That’s probably why I was so excited to find this video (shared by PuppyTales – thanks!). It shows a young puppy who is hesitant to go down a small flight of steps. An adult dog walks past a number of times and the puppy eventually follows suit and descends the steps himself:
This video is getting a lot of publicity for the cute factor, but I am more interested in how the puppy demonstrates an understanding of the adult dog’s behaviour, and how it relates to their own. Obviously, there are other factors in play for this puppy descending the steps, as well, but at least part of the puppy’s success is related to the adult dog’s descent.
So, I want to ask, when have you seen a dog model behaviour of another dog? Do you use modelling to train dogs? I look forward to your responses!
Strangely, today Stanley Coren posted a very similar post on his blog! Read “Dogs Learn by Modelling the Behavior of Other Dogs“.
And a new link: Children teaching a dog to jump on the bed.
This is our near-weekly instalment where we share what we’ve tweeted about in the week gone by. If you don’t like waiting for this post, you can always follow us on Twitter.
Tweet of the Week
This week, my favourite link I shared goes to an article written by Karen Peak called “Choosing the Rescue Route“. She suggests that potential adopters be prepared (e.g. do some research on dog breeds), consider whether to go through a kennel rescue or a foster care rescue, ask themselves “Is this really a rescue?”, and avoid rescues that give guilt trips regarding dogs. A valid resource that explains that rescue is not always the ‘right’ option for everyone.