Commentaries

A decade later, the ultimate human-companion animal bond resolution makes its appearance once again to celebrate New Year’s 2020 with our companion animals.

As one year ends and another begins, all of us in the little house on the hill wish  you and yours of all species lots of good memories and a holiday season filled with love and joy.

Who’s the primary animal caregiver in your home? What if you’re not there?

Because I’m a more optimistic person by nature and the canine transport scene was getting me down, I decided to list the benefits I’ve gained since this process began.

This month’s commentary considers that growing population of those who use or seek dogs that they train themselves to enhance their own or a loved one’s physical or mental health.

This commentary considers the challenges and responsibilities facing those who prescribe assistance or support dogs for people with a growing array of conditions.

When those interested in animal health began talking about taking a more holistic approach, initially I was quite excited. I felt this way because I expected their approach to be, well, holistic. But…

Suppose I told you that a disease so contagious existed that it could spread with remarkable speed from one person or animal to a thousand or more in a matter of minutes. Some humans can transmit it to some animals and some animals can transmit it to some people Even more frightening, this neuro-pathogen typically enters through the eye and disrupts retinal cells to gain access to the most ancient part of brain. Once there, it disrupts the autonomic nervous system which controls all those vital functions necessary for life. Symptoms associated with the disease include increased sweating or

As our pets’ lives have become more high-tech, does this shift indicate a more intimate or a more remote relationship with them?

With each passing decade, the respect with which US society views service dogs and their handlers sadly steadily declines. This poses increased problems for these animals and their handlers and those around them.

Waterboarding: a torture technique whereby individuals are treated in a manner that makes them believe they are going to drown. Surely, you may be thinking, this is not a suitable subject for the post-holiday season! Emotionally, I agree. On the other hand, you may be as surprised as I was to discover how many behavioral/training concepts directly or indirectly relate to water. This connection popped into my mind because two of these tend to raise their heads during the pre-holiday season and often linger into January, fueled by a human desire for quick results when animals have problems. First

We may tell ourselves that technology enables us to ignore our internal clocks and those of our diurnal animal companions. But as the cost of doing so mounts up, could becoming more in sync with those clocks be the better option?

This month I want to explore the ethology of the human-animal bond. In my pre-ethology days, I’m the first to admit that my views of the bond were shaped more by the media than science…

As often happens, I stumbled upon material I wrote almost a decade ago while looking for something else. When I  stumbled on this, couldn’t help noticing how little has changed. One welcomes exception is that increasing numbers trainers and behavioral consultants recognize the difference between the animal behavior as traditionally perceived by psychologists that dominates training, and that perceived by those in the biological sciences. Although Konrad Lorenz suggested the  word ethology to reflect the study of the animals within their normal environments more than a half century ago, it didn’t enter the mainstream training/behavioral lexicon until relatively recently.

I saved cats for last in this series on instinctive drift in companion animals because they occupy a unique niche in the domesticated species line-up. That unique niche, in turn, owes its existence to behaviors that make cats anything but little dogs or fur-covered humanoids. Add that they’re the most recent addition to the self-domesticated/domesticated population and it’s no surprise that cats may drift more readily toward their deeply entrenched behaviors, some or many of which may confound any humans, canines, or members of other domestic species with whom the cats interact.

One unintended consequence of the mass transportation of unwanted dogs nationally and internationally is that people like me with an interest in animal health and behavior may now encounter problems seldom if ever previously seen.

In retrospect I can appreciate how becoming proficient in animal behavior, like most animal-related professions, consists of a process that in some ways mimics the co-evolution of humans and other domestic animals. First you understand the normal behaviors of the animals around you at the same time as you acknowledge that those animals also are trying to make sense of human behavior. At some point in this process, you also realize that it would help enormously if you understood your own normal and problem behaviors too.

It’s that time of year here in the northern hemisphere when hormone levels shift and thoughts turn to mating, reproduction, and raising young. Some of us find ourselves getting all gooey when we see photos or videos of baby animals; the urge to add a companion animal to the household may increase. Then one day we find ourselves trolling the Internet and scrolling through pages of photos on purebred, shelter, or rescue sites looking for THE ONE… Back by popular request is the list of questions that kindhearted and well-intentioned but ill-prepared folks have told me over the years that they

No sooner did I finish Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, a memoir written by Alan Alda, than I began thinking about how experiences with companion  animals may carry over into other parts of our lives. For young, only child Alda, a black cocker spaniel made the isolation, boredom and pain of polio bearable. When the dog died unexpectedly, he became so distraught that his father took the body to a taxidermist in hopes of lessening the loss. I won’t give away what happened except to say that the result was not what they expected, much worse than Ollie’s camera-phobic expression in

It’s late February as I write this and I’m having a major attack of cabin fever. It began this morning when I turned on my computer, saw the screen saver I loaded the beginning of November and hated it, really hated it. Superficially it doesn’t look inflammatory. It’s merely a view of my front yard in winter. What’s so bad about that?

This month’s commentary is a review of The Great Grisby: Two Thousand Years of Literary, Royal, Philosophical, and Artistic Dog Lovers and Their Exceptional Animals by Mikita Brottman.