Spay Day is an annual campaign of The Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International to inspire people to save animal lives by spaying or neutering pets and feral cats.

Officially the last Tuesday of February, Spay Day includes events and activities taking place throughout February across the United States and U.S. territories, and around the world.

If your dog is digging in the backyard, this can be a hard habit to break if you don’t understand the cause and some simple but effective cures. Dogs digging in the yard is one of the most common behavior problems, but as with all dog training, consistency, repetition and patience are part of the solution.

So why do dogs dig in the yard to begin with? The most common reason is boredom. Dogs are intelligent creatures and they are pack animals. If you stick your dog out in the back yard, your dog does not get any intellectual stimulation, he will also have barrier frustration because he can hear and smell things beyond the fence but he can’t investigate them, and he’s lonely. Dogs need to be part of your family, they are pack animals. Try to imagine how you would feel if you were isolated all the time with nothing to do.

Dogs can be fearful for many reasons. It can be an inherently skittish breed (Chihuahua), have suffered some kind of trauma, people around them do the wrong things when something that might be fearful occurs (such as coddling the dog when it shakes), or they have never been exposed to the world around it (living in a backyard its entire life). There are many extremes of fear which can result in aggression or health issues. It is important to remember that every dog put in the right situation can bite, but it is how we react to what the dog tells us if we will get bit or not. When working with fearful dogs, we always want to be careful not to trigger a bite. Once a dog bites it is easier to bite again. Especially if the person reacts incorrectly to the bite.

3 Puppies and their girls after Puppy Class.
Bite Inhibition and Socialization.
Preventing bad bite inhibition and poor socialization are the most urgent priorities when it comes to your new puppy.  These things need to be worked on before your puppy is 18weeks old.  Unfortunately, many owners don’t consider or think about training until the puppy is 5 or 6 months old.  This is actually a poor time to start training as the puppy is no longer a puppy, but an adolescent.  That’s right a teenager! The good news is that dog …

Major separation anxiety was the focus of a private lesson with a client today. While there are many reasons why dogs develop separation anxiety, this particular case started because a client was home bound for an extended period of time due to medical issues. She had just adopted her dog Woody, a 5 month old mix breed from the shelter about 4 weeks prior to her illness. She adored this dog “to the max” because of his soft gentle nature.

One way dogs communicate is to growl. A dog’s growling is not always a bad thing. Some dogs that tend to be rather vocal will growl
when they need to go outside, or they may have a gutteral growl when they are trying to tell you they are hungry.

These types of growls are very different from a dog who growls to tell you to back off his space, his food, his toy. These incidents of
growling need to be dealt with immediately. This type of growling is your dog’s way of telling you that he believes he is the “in charge” and that
it is HIS toy, HIS bed, HIS food. This is a dominant dog. This will escalate into something more harmful if not immediately addressed.

Hundreds of thousands of dogs have been turned into animal shelters because their owners didn’t know how to deal with behavior problems and couldn’t find a reliable resource to help them.  We, at the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, think it is long overdue to dedicate a month where we can bring awareness to the importance of socialization and training, and most of all, to inform the public that training your dog can be simple and fun! The APDT has selected January as the perfect month because, as we all …

Does your dog whine? Irritating isn’t it. But before you loose your patience, you need to make an evaluation of why your dog is whining. Is there something wrong? Does he need something like– to go out to the bathroom? Or, is he demanding something, like your attention?

Since our dogs can’t talk, their only forms of communication are barking and whining. When a dog consistently whines, the very first thing to check for are any medical issues. If your dog is in some type of pain, his way to deal with it is to whine. Especially if you have an older dog, arthritis can be very painful and the dog’s only way of telling you it’s in pain is to whine.

Each time I start the training process with a new client, whether it be a new, nippy puppy or a destructive, bored dog, I always recommend a slew of chew/ interactive toys.  One of my main goals is to turn the dog into a chew- toy- fanatic.  A chew- toy-aholic, if you will.
I have written before how incredibly important mental stimulation is for your dog.  See USE YOUR BRAIN.  Not only that, but chewing is a very natural doggie behavior, whether we humans like it or not.  We must give …

Holiday times can be joyful or a source of stress for all of us, and that goes for your dogs, too!
With some advanced planning and a little training, you can make things more festive and fun for Fido and less stressful for you!
The Association of Pet Dog Trainers offers these helpful tips:
Things to Keep in Mind Throughout the Holiday Seasons

Dogs can be very sensitive to changes in their environment and routines. When family members take time off from work and school, house guests come to stay, or other visitors roll …