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BARKS Podcast with the PPG Advocacy Panel: Discussion #6 – What Does Pet Industry Licensing Look Like?

What Does Pet Industry Licensing Look Like? Join the Pet Professional Guild (PPG) Advocacy Panel for a discussion on What Does Pet Industry Licensing Look Like? Pet guardians and pet professionals, listen as panel members share their expertise in a fun, free-flowing format. Your Moderator: ...

BARKS News – April 2021

By BARKS from the Guild

Listen to the April 2021 edition of BARKS News! Highlights include: FREE member event Up Your Business Game! New PORTL workshop dates New member job posting board & member profile ...

Why You Should Avoid “Obedience” Training Tactics for Dogs and Consider this Alternative Instead

By BARKS from the Guild

By Animal Courses Direct Firstly, let’s look at the definition of obedience – ‘It is a form of social influence that involves acting on the orders of an authority figure.’ The word ‘obey’ is ...

One of the Most Important Things to Teach Your New Puppy

By now, your new puppy is adjusting well to his new family. You probably already have started him in a good, positive puppy training class. After all, you have heard time and time again, that you should be socializing your puppy. Puppy socialization is a process in which you gradually ...

A Revelation about Resolutions

Over the years, I’ve made many New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, get organized, read more, and hundreds of other goals that became part of my never ending “To Do” list. But this year, I had a revelation and decided to do something different and so I made my resolution to find more ways of ...

Does Size Matter?

A dog's size influences his or her behavior. We sort of know this don't we. What about people? Our stereotype of a hyper and talkative person who is constantly on the move would be a small person, and a slow-talking, slow moving thinker someone much larger. This has always been my own ...

There’s Nothing Simple about Dog Play

Dogs’ play behavior has, over time, been attributed to a variety of factors. It provides puppies practice for adult behaviors. Play with humans is about "dominance." Play with other dogs is about "dominance" or "status." It’s a replacement behavior for hunting and killing prey. It’s a way to ...

Loving the Vacuum Cleaner

Here’s a little video I made of my dogs’ response to the vacuum cleaner. Hurray for classical conditioning! As soon as any dog comes into my home, I start pairing any potentially scary sounds of human life with great stuff. Two of my dogs weren’t scared of the vacuum in the first place, and ...

Treats or Bingos?

Traditionally, tidbits given to dogs outside their regular meals are labeled 'treats'. Pet shops sell 'treats' and we traditionally refer to any food the dog gets by hand for doing nothing as a 'treat'. I feel this 'treat' word can sometimes get in the way of converting people who have 'had ...

Cats in a Dog’s World

Cats communicate in a variety of ways. Those of us who are most familiar with canines can often have difficulty differentiating the signals that cats send in attempts to communicate their intent. While many of us prefer to work with dogs, it is often the case that the canines with whom we ...

Positive Is a Perception: Empathy to Understand the Perception of the Other

Two things happened to me recently that set me off thinking about positive reinforcement from the recipient’s perspective. Firstly I read a very negative review of positive reinforcement training through a Facebook blog. The writer was suggesting that positive reinforcement is a misnomer ...

All I Want for Christmas…

Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is an e-collar…that I can use without violating my professional ethics. Thanks to modern technology and micro circuitry dog owners and trainers alike enjoy a variety of devices for use in training. Unfortunately, not every one of those devices is ...