Latest Blog Posts

Litter Box Sign Language

A discussion of all the different factors that may come into play when a cat doesn’t use the litter box would fill a hefty tome. And like any information related to human and animal behavior, it would require constant updating as new behaviors evolved as conditions and cats change. The only constant will be as always: the animal’s desire to achieve physiological and behavioral stability in the most energy-efficient way possible.

While this podcast discusses one feline coping strategy used by territorial housebound cats, it made me wonder what kind of behaviors similarly confined dogs trained to used pee pads might muster. Logic says they should evolve their own behavioral repertoire to cope with the elimination/marking dilemma too. If you’ve experienced or know of such a situation, please let me know.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:05 — 5.6MB)

The Home Base Bond

Did you ever think about all the different emotional charges the concept of home base may elicit? For me these all tend to be positive, probably because I’m one of those people who possesses a strong sense of place. Even though I readily appreciate and enjoy all kinds of different environments, there’s something about this little house on the hill that says “home” like none other.

As a child, I remember my parents functioning that same way for me. Home was where they were. As long as they were there, I’d be safe. Sure, there were times when I thought they didn’t understand me or that they seemed so ordinary compared to the parents depicted on television back then. But when I felt like I needed a home base I could really trust, I inevitably  turned to Mom and Dad.

And so it is or should be with our animals, as one of my clients clearly discovered when his cats involved him in a game.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:04 — 5.6MB)

When Words Can Kill

Authors Barbara Natterson-Horwitz, MD and Kathryn Bowers open their book, Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health with an incident that will be familiar to many dog and cat folks. When faced with a kitten-sized emperor tamarin monkey  Dr. Horowitz immediately related to the animal as she would to a human infant by establishing eye contact and doing the baby talk routine. However what happened next may strike some of you as bizarre and possibly even mean.

To read more…

The Animal X-Files 4: The It Factor

Did you ever get encounter something while working on a project that caused your mind to make a leap, the results of which made you laugh out loud? That’s what happened to me when I reached the part of this podcast where I ask how you would feel if I referred to you as an “it”. Suddenly the mental image of the Anthropomorphic Police in their storm trooper uniforms materializing in my office and vaporizing me (and possibly the dogs and the cat) filled my mind.

Even so,  I can guarantee you that if you were born in the US, there’s a good chance that at least once you did fall within an It-Population just as I did. And the fact that we did set the stage for our dogs and cats to be stripped of their sexual identities too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:56 — 5.5MB)

The Animal X-Files 3: Symbolic Animal Population Control

When we’re younger, it’s easy to believe that what we do to pet dogs and cats animals represents what we’ve done for ages because it reflects the most logical way to do them. Only as we get older and experienced enough to take a longer view do we realize that procedures we accepted as the norm in our youth may claim suspect and even bizarre historical roots. Another such example  of how the adoption of the human medical model affected the practice of companion animal medicine relates to the removal of reproductive organs as a function of sex. Can you guess what it is?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:54 — 6.7MB)

The Animal X-Files: Sexual Reticence

How easily could you ask your veterinarian about your dog or cat’s sexual behavior or  some concern about your pet’s penis, vulva, or vagina? How easily could your veterinarian discuss such subjects with you?  Strange as it may seem to anyone with any knowledge of biology, many physicians still maintain an almost Victorian prudishness when it comes to addressing any topic related to the nether regions.  While no veterinarian who would adopt such an attitude would last 2 minutes in a farm animal setting, it’s may be surprisingly easy for companion animal practitioners to do so—unless their clients bring the subject up.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:58 — 5.5MB)

The Animal X-Files: The Loss of Wholeness

This podcast is the first of a series of meanderings about what affect the choice of veterinary medicine to pattern itself on human medicine has had on animal health, behavior, and the human-animal bond. I named the series the Animal X-Files for two reasons that I consider valid. Can you guess what they are? I also made one grossly erroneous anatomical reference in this podcast. If you pick it up, feel free to let me know about that too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:58 — 6.4MB)

Companion Animal Learning, Stress, and the Immune Response

Sometimes after successfully implementing the changes that eliminate their animal’s problem behavior, my clients comment that doing so ranked among the most difficult but most fulfilling work they’ve ever done. And no doubt their animals felt the same way. One possible reason why mental changes may strike us that way takes us back to that bane and blessing of reality: our perceptions. We live in a society that equates hard work with hard physical labor such as splitting and stacking wood, hiking, pumping iron, or doing anything that gets us hot and sweaty. Within this realm, making mental changes in ourselves and consistently implementing those that make it easy for our animals to do likewise seem about as challenging as contemplating one’s pudgy abdomen.

As it turns out though, learning is anything but a benign process.

Learn more here.

Behavioral Contranyms

Have no idea what contranyms, the subject of this week’s podcast, are? Here are three hints to help you:

1.  All of these words share a special property.
2. More likely than not you’re familiar with such words, but didn’t realize they rated a special name.
3. Some non-behavioral examples include second-guess, impregnate, and secrete.

Now that you know what contranyms are, can you think of any terms related to our interactions with animals that could fall into that category?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:36 — 5.1MB)

Are We Ignoring Gifted Animals?

I suppose that some and even many might consider the subject of this podcast ludicrous. However how the quality of the learning opportunities we offer more intelligent than average animals, and especially dogs, has practical repercussions for our society today.  While we may roll our eyes at problems those animals who possess less than average mental capacity might get themselves into, these pale when compared to those of more mentally gifted ones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:49 — 6.3MB)