“Leave it” used to be one of my favorite things to teach because it seemed so effective so quickly. I would start by standing in plain view of my dog, who, in most cases, had been eating treats from my hand just moments before. I would then pick up a treat and place it in my palm, closing my fingers around it. And then I would lower my closed fist to the dog’s nose. … However, the more dogs I have trained and the more I have learned about behavioral science, the more strongly I feel about avoiding this approach to teaching “leave it” entirely.

In September 2012, my wife and I (Ran) took our dogs and went up to New Hampshire for our anniversary weekend. The cabin is on a dead end dirt road with the houses of families who have been going there for a hundred years (at that point, it was only 90 years, but you get the idea), and the general culture is that dogs are loose: they run around off leash, sleep on the docks, and visit the other dogs and families of the neighborhood… Unfortunately for me, this was the first time I learned that we had porcupines in the area.

Kerby and I had been back to our local farm on a weekly basis to visit with the cows, goats, sheep, and pigs, and Kerby had successful and positive visits each time... But I had this itchy question in the back of my mind: did he have instinct for herding?

This month we are delighted to introduce you to Ali Sutch, KPA-CPT CCUI (she/they). Ali owns Up to Snuff where they provide dog behavior consultation, day training, group classes, and virtual learning opportunities. Ali is a tremendously talented dog professional and someone who focuses a great deal on dog-dog play and dog-dog interactions. I learned so much from our conversation and know that you will too!

Stephanie and I (Ran) both started to attend professional behavior conferences when we were still in graduate school, and it was exciting to see the incredible breadth of work that people do within the field of behavior analysis. While most people at this particular conference are experts or currently students in Behavior Analysis, the majority of them work in human behavior, and we were eager to contribute to the diversity of the conference by bringing in programming related to dog behavior. Plus - who doesn’t want to talk about dogs?

When we sat down to craft what our business would actually be, again and again we found ourselves returning to values. We had a general sense of what types of services we wanted to provide for clients with dogs and dog professionals with clients, but we wanted to do it in a way that honestly just wouldn’t feel icky.