When we did agility with our dog, we drove 2.5 hours one way to take lessons from a world-class trainer. I have a friend in Houston who starts a 2-hour drive across Houston in 5 o’clock traffic to get to the best training school she could find. So when we surveyed 3500 dog owners and discovered […]

Discover how military working dogs serve today, from explosive detection to rescue missions, and why these highly trained dogs are in demand.

Bike riding is a great way to enjoy the outdoors with your dog. Here are top tips on how to safely enjoy biking with dogs.

Do dogs respond to play signals given by humans? Nicola J.Rooney, John Bradshaw, Ian H.Robinson Specific actions used by humans do communicate a playful context to dogs and can be described as interspecific play signals. Why do adult dogs ‘play’?  John W.S. Bradshaw, Anne J. Pullen and Nicola J. Rooney “We suggest that the domestic […]

The above chart shows the work of Jaak Panksepp. His study in animals led him to a new theory of personality. Working with the idea of primitive base emotions he developed his theory of Affective Neuroscience. It is easy to see how his theories dovetail with what we need from detection dogs. His studies discovered […]

The above chart shows the work of Jaak Panksepp. His study in animals led him to a new theory of personality. Working with the idea of primitive base emotions he developed his theory of Affective Neuroscience. It is easy to see how his theories dovetail with what we need from detection dogs. His studies discovered […]

“Differentiated instruction” has been a hot topic in education for many years. There are workshops and books dedicated solely to helping teachers differentiate their lessons, assignments, and assessments. To say it simply, differentiated instruction is providing students the type of instruction they need based on their level of readiness (Vygotsky, 1986) and their learning profile […]

At this year’s AKC Detection Dog Conference, I was asked to create a scoring rubric for the weekly assessment records. You can find it on the webpage under the Records tab, along with the link for submitting your weekly records. This is adjustable based on the participants needs, but it should serve our purposes.

You might think your sweet and affectionate spaniel was born just to be cuddled and adored by you, but you’d be wrong: Spaniels were actually first bred to be hunting companions! Their role was to hunt, find game, and then drive them out of their hiding places (also called “flushing”). Want to see those natural […]

The top three All American Dogs of each height class have qualified for the 2021 AKC Fast CAT Invitational taking place Dec. 15 – 18 in Orlando, FL. In FastCAT, dogs run individually in a timed 100-yard dash. The top three fastest dogs of each breed, based on the 2020 averages, were invited to the […]