Dog Treat Review: Orijen

I was recently contacted by a Chewy.com rep to sample and review Orijen dog treats. Well, given our previous experience with Chewy.com, our positive training methods (and Elka's limpid Disney eyes), we go through a lot of treats in this household, so I of course said yes. All of the treats were single protein, so really, it was just a matter (in my mind) of choosing something that would be something of a novelty for Elka, so we went with the Ranch Raised Lamb.

(image provided by Mr. Chewy)

Doberman breed infographic from Adopt-a-pet!

Looking for a Doberman Dog or Puppy? Why Not Adopt!

Book Review: A Dog Named Boo, by Lisa J. Edwards

I had the honor of being approached by a publicist at Harlequin to read and review the book, A Dog Named Boo: How One Dog and One Woman Rescued Each Other, and the Lives They Transformed Along the Way, by Lisa J. Edwards. Intrigued, both because I'm a sucker for dog books and because I thought Harlequin only published romance novels, I accepted. I'm glad that I did!

To kick off Lisa Edwards' blog tour, I've read and reviewed A Dog Named Boo, and have copies for giveaway!

September 27 is Train Humane Day

On Twitter one night last week, I saw that DogTipper was one of the sponsors for Train Humane Day.  I of course said to myself (or maybe to Elka) "Hey, what's Train Humane Day?"

From the Train Humane site:

Train Humane’s Mission:Our mission is to make the world more humane for dogs through the use of humane training tools and education.Raise the bar on the tools we use to train all dogs and puppies to ensure that they are humane, safe, respectful and cause as little stress as possible without choking.

Sounds pretty good to me!

Command Clinic: Look at That

All right, all right. "Look at that" isn't really a command. I've heard it described as a game, which I suppose is sort of it.

"Look at that" is something you may have heard of if you're interested in clicker training and positive methods of training. It's in the book Control Unleashed, by Leslie McDevitt. It's sort of what I've done when working with Elka in respect to other dogs. At absolute perfection, I want her to just be able to ignore other dogs. At worst, I want her to be able to be calm around them. Lofty goals, right? Shoot for the stars!

Reward and Punishment

Rewards and punishments get discussed an awful lot in the dog world.

If you want to be more precise, though, you need to go the behavioral route, and talk about reinforcement. In dog training books, and on sites, you may or may not have seen the little grid with "positive reinforcement", "negative reinforcement", "positive punishment", and "negative punishment" in it.

Now in this case, positive and negative may not mean what you think they mean. Nor does punishment.