Flipper is a puppy very scared and worried about the people and the environment and on the first day that I put the bottle on the ground he was three meters that barked and hid behind the walls of my flower beds. Learning is an a relationship experience .
Here, Bran (border collie) helps Molly and Brick ...
To think that Bran was defined coward by someone who calls himself an expert on dog behavior and classes.
First spring sunny sunday, I meant to enjoy warmth and a book on a beach chair in my yard. Everything was ready, lemonade, book, sunglasses. Fun in 3...2...
And here we go, my neighbours had guests. The whole family was there, granparents, parents, grandchildren. And the new labrador puppy they got some months ago.
Lately, on Facebook I shared a file dealing with kids pictures. The text explained that those were not nice pictures of cute children with cute dogs. They were pictures of worried and scared dogs and unaware kids. Pictures showing potentially dangerous circumstances.
You cannot teach calm. A dog, who’s sitting or laying down motionless, is not calm.
He’s just sitting or laying down motionless. The lack of a physical reaction reassures us about his emotional control skills. He keeps sitting, laying down motionless cause he learned not to react to that specific stimulus, and obey to us. Wrong. It’s quite the opposite. The freedom to move, to interact and to react to that stimulus show the real motivations and emotions of the dog.
Since the year 2007 I've been arranging weekly dog socialization meetings. During these classes dogs meet each other inside an enclosed area. The purpose of these meetings is developing the dog social skills, anticipate any problem and help the dog showing troubles in the interaction with other dogs.
Read more: The canine socialization and the socialization classes
Empathy is defined as the ability to relate to someone else's emotions and experiences. Recent studies have revealed that the psychobiological bases of empathy lie in the mechanism of mirror neurons. Our ability to feel empathy is based on a series of inner resonance mechanisms which together allow us to mentally repeat emotional, motor and sensory aspects of an individual we are observing.
While empathy is a priceless tool in the process of gaining knowledge and understanding, it is also a mechanism which can elude our control and of which we often are not aware.
One possible answer: its owners' fear. As a dog grows up and loses its reassuring puppy appearance, the owners can become afraid of its attempts to impose itself on its own kind. Interrupting these interactions, telling the dog off or preventing them can however have negative consequences.
I started dealing with aggressiveness during a rehabilitation of ex-fighting pit bulls project. I felt myself in charge to protect people working with me on the project, and to understand if and how those dogs could be given to families and introduced in the community. I witnessed an assault - this pit bull had attacked the trainer during the assessment - and I was shocked. I had no knowledge about those dogs, therefore, to achieve a better knowledge of those dogs themselves and the breed, I chose to use a test assessment. That's how I began to study dog aggressiveness.