Archive for the New Commentary Alert Category

Requiem for Companion Animal Play Wow! How’s that for a morose title for a dead-of-winter commentary? I could blame it on a fascinating article by Paul Tullis in the November-December 2011 Scientific American Mind entitled “The Death of Pre-School.” But all that article did was cause me to organize my thoughts regarding similar changes in [...]

Individual Life and the Bond There are many sayings and phenomena in human behavior that remind us that connections between fact and fiction, art and life, and perception exist even if we don’t notice them. Sometimes we may go for years and never notice them. Then one day something happens that suddenly catapults the connection [...]

Holiday Cheer Would it surprise you to learn that I was once an angel? For those considering renouncing your faith if the likes of me can achieve such status, permit to add that this occurred when I was in the second grade. And I’m sure it only happened because I happened to have access to [...]

The Genius Loci, the Human-Animal Bond, and Following Atticus by Tom Ryan I don’t recall that anyone ever taught me that some places possess a spirit, a genius loci. If someone did, it must have been when I was very young because I don’t remember ever not noticing how a place felt, its spirit, as [...]

Animal Headlines I’m one of those people—and I dearly hope I’m not the only one—who sometimes thinks in headlines. Especially when I do stupid things. Whereas others might think, “Oh, s__t!” or other profane thoughts as such times, the headline “Bureau pins local resident at bottom of stairs” occurred to me when I foolishly thought [...]

Physically Fit Human-Companion Animal Units I came up with the title of this commentary after an unsuccessful attempt to describe the concept of companion animals and their owners engaging in mutually rewarding exercise together. This was to differentiate such a relationship from those skewed in one direction or another. You know, the owner who takes [...]

  Why Animals Do What They Do Arrrggghhh! I wrote this ages ago and then forgot to post it. My apologies.  Too much going on. The advantage of taking ethological approach to normal and problem animal behavior This commentary is a based on material I’ll be presenting at a seminar on June 5th that focuses [...]

A Trio of Studies with Human-Companion Animal Bond Implications Reports of two studies involving kids and one involving dogs so reminded me of what I see clinically that it caused me to ponder yet again the role teaching methods may play in problem behavior. And because at least some kids get dogs when they grow [...]

Putting Things Off and Off and Off When the time came to write this month’s commentary, I found myself in a somewhat lackluster state sitting at the kitchen table drinking Teeccino and eating dark chocolate with bits of ginger without a relevant thought in my head. My thoughts, such as they were, mostly drifted to [...]

Actually, it’s been available since New Year’s Day. I just forgot to post a blog to that effect. My excuse is that for some reason the new year didn’t begin slowly as it usually does. In fact, there was a period of time when things were so crazy, I was wondering if 2011 was going [...]