Licking: affectionate, disconcerting, or just plain disgusting? For us humans, it can be a bit difficult to identify with the doggie habit of licking one another in greeting. We don’t do it, after all, and though our tongues come in handy for things like ice-cream eating and sucking that last dollop of peanut butter off the knife, we certainly wouldn’t welcome a visitor into our home by giving them a long, lingering lick on the cheek (unless you were brought up to embrace certain social mores currently unheard of in Western society). Dogs use their tongues to explore the world. A Click to Read More

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Barking dogs – Understanding it and dealing with it Some owners seem to want their dogs to stop barking, period: a good dog is a quiet dog, and the only time that barking’s permitted is when there’s a man in a black balaclava and stripy prison outfit, clutching a haversack marked ‘Swag’, clambering in through your bedroom window. Dogs don’t see barking in quite the same light. Your dog has a voice, just like you do, and she uses it just how you do too: to communicate something to the people she cares about. I don’t think that barking is necessarily a bad thing – in fact, Click to Read More

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Separation anxiety is one of the most common problems that dogs develop. It’s an anxiety disorder, and it is defined as a state of intense panic brought on by the dog’s isolation/separation from her owner(s). In other words: when you leave for work in the morning, your dog is plunged into a state of nervous anxiety which intensifies extremely quickly. Dogs are social animals – they need plenty of company and social interaction to keep them happy and content. No dog likes to be left alone for long stretches of time, but some dogs do a lot worse than others: these are the ones most Click to Read More

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How To Recognize, Handle and prevent dog aggression A dog is an instinctively aggressive creature. In the wild, aggression came in very handy: dogs needed aggression to hunt, to defend themselves from other creatures, and to defend resources such as food, a place to sleep, and a mate. Selective breeding over the centuries has minimized and refined this trait significantly, but there’s just no getting around it: dogs are physically capable of inflicting serious injuries (just look at their teeth!) because that’s how they’ve survived and evolved. And Mother Nature is pretty wily – Click to Read More

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