By and large, I loved this book. Nichols masterfully weaved anecdotes with advice and recommendations for puppy rearing. She began with her personal history and transition to becoming a breeder, addressing the ethics of dog breeding and how it fits into a world where there are so many homeless dogs out there in need of a safe place to land. The book included descriptions of a puppy’s developmental milestones from conception through day 56 of their furry lives; how to prepare for bringing a puppy home, and how to promote the development of those happy, healthy, resilient dogs described on the book jacket. I’ll tackle my impressions of each of these sections in turn and highlight areas that, as a dog lover, guardian, and professional, I was delighted and relieved to see included. I’ll also point out areas where my own practice and philosophy differ from the author. 

Hi all! Stephanie here. Earlier this year I had the delightful opportunity to interview Ezri Silverberg, KPA-CTP, CBCC-KA of Aspara Windsprites. I first met Ezri when Kerby was a baby puppy and I was looking for playdates with friendly dogs and puppies nearby. Ran introduced us and Ezri happened to have a puppy playgroup with some recent puppies and other friends’ puppies that we were able to join a few times. It was a joy to see Kerby get to romp and play and to learn about Ezri’s process as a breeder. Fast forward to last year when Ezri started offering a mentorship program that Ran joined to learn more about raising puppies with science. Ran raved about how much they learned and what a valuable experience it was. Given how much we have both learned about breeding and raising puppies from Ezri, we knew we had to interview her for the blog this year.

I (Stephanie) had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Erika Fields from Brown Dog Coalition. Brown Dog Coalition (BDC), as you'll learn below, is an incredible foster-based rescue organization based in Massachusetts. Last year, Ran and I began to partner with BDC to provide free office hours once a month for the organization's foster and adoptive guardians. We just love everything that BDC does and are excited to share more about them with you this week!

It is appalling to me that I am just now sitting down to compose my thoughts on Kerby’s first clinic that happened last September! It is now eleven months later and we’ve continued to do so much. The title of this blog post was going to be “In which we go to a herding clinic” but at a conference I attended this summer where I met another sheep herding enthusiast, I was informed of the very technical term of “sheeping” as shorthand for herding sheep and I am officially adopting it :) (don’t worry, I will still title these posts “Kerby the herding dog” because “Kerby the Sheeping Dog” sounds like he’s dressing up as a sheep, and we’re just not quite there yet). 

Last fall we were delighted to apply for and be accepted to their Team Facilitator Certification program with Atlas Assistance Dogs. In this program, we were trained to work directly with Atlas clients to help them prepare their dogs for service work, including taking and passing a Public Access Test (PAT). I couldn’t have been more excited to participate in the program. What I didn’t realize at the time I applied was that I would soon become much more intimately familiar with disability than I could have imagined when we started this process.

Even more often, the question of how to become a dog trainer comes to us from people who are currently BCBAs who work with people and want to switch over to working with animals. It can be confusing to figure out how to make a switch in populations; this is especially true in terms of dog training because the field of dog training is unregulated. That is, there is no designated path, degree, or certification that is required to become a behavior analyst who works with dogs. And this is where we start to see problems crop up.

Ran here! I first heard of Lynn Ungar when her poem, Pandemic, went viral in 2020. Shortly after that, her name popped up in a Clicker Expo chat. I was like, “Is that the person who wrote the poem?” and I looked her up - just to discover that, on top of being a dog person who wrote beautiful poetry, Lynn is also a Unitarian Universalist minister (I am a lifelong UU!). Given how many overlapping interests we have, I reached out to see if she would be interested in speaking with me about dogs, writing, and ministry - and thank goodness she was! Keep reading below to learn more about Lynn, dancing dogs, the intersection of ministry and behavior change, and more.

This month it is my pleasure to introduce you to Andrea Viveiros, KPA CTP, FFCP owner of Connect the Dogs. Andrea is a truly stellar dog trainer and behavior professional who I first met through Ran. What always strikes me about Andrea is her endless enthusiasm for all things dog behavior! She has a wonderful way of making dog behavior and, in the case of our interview today, enrichment accessible and connecting it to the bigger picture of dog welfare. Enrichment is a critical concept in how we care for dogs and something that we always consider here at DBI. I came out of our conversation with tons of ideas both for DBI clients and my own pup Kerby. I know you are going to love it!

Here at DBI, we are preparing for our summer workshop at the Canine Center at Hessian Hill in upstate New York. During this workshop, many dogs will be spending time in the car while they wait for other dogs to finish their turns or while we’re doing human-only exercises. Some people are already familiar with how to do this safely and comfortably, but car crating is brand new for other people (including us!). Here are some resources and tips we have gathered from a range of sources about safe and comfortable car crating.

This month I am so happy to introduce you to Kimberly Palermo, of Blue Dog, a dog walking and training company based here in Massachusetts. I (Stephanie) first learned about Kim’s work when attending Conference Unleashed, a conference about all things Control Unleashed (CU). Kim gave an incredible presentation about using CU exercises in dog training group classes. Imagine my delight when I learned that Blue Dog wasn’t too far from where I live. I started taking Kerby to classes at Blue Dog and was delighted with all the approach and all the instructors we worked with there. Later on, Kim and I discovered we both were interested in teaching our dogs to herd and soon we and our dogs became good friends!

This month we are so excited to introduce you to Molly Neher of Atlas Assistance Dogs. Ran and I first heard about Atlas at a ClickerExpo presentation. Atlas Assistance Dogs is an organization that helps guardians train their own service dog by pairing them with a trained facilitator to guide them through teaching disability-related tasks and public access skills. We were blown away by their commitment to accessibility and inclusion, and the enormous amount of support they provide clients at all stages in the process. Molly was so generous in sharing her time and experiences, I know you’ll get as much out of reading the interview as I did conducting it!

This month it is our pleasure to introduce you to Lyz Knight of Rover Rehab Dog Training. Lyz provides one-on-one dog consultation and group classes and specializes in working with dogs who have challenges with fear and anxiety. I (Stephanie) hired Lyz last year to help me with some challenges Kerby has around unfamiliar guests visiting our home. Lyz brought such insight and patience into our work together. Kerby and I both benefited so much from her expertise and recommendations. So you can imagine how exciting it was for me to sit down with Lyz to talk more about dogs we label as fearful. I hope you enjoy and learn as much as I did from our conversation.

Most of the Control Unleashed activities are very easy both for dog and human ends of the leash, making them easy to learn and apply in all types of environments. The use of predictable, reliable patterns is a hallmark of this program. For me and my clients this is one of the most impactful sets of exercises I have used to tackle confidence-building.

For our first outing, I wasn’t concerned with what kind of stock Kerby would meet. I just wanted to get a sense of how he would behave around farm animals in general. Would he bark his head off? Would he cower behind me? Kerby was born and spent his early weeks on a farm, but to my knowledge didn’t have any interaction with farm animals. I hadn’t seen any stress responses in the face of deer on hikes in the woods, but at the same time he also barked and hid when confronted by my friend’s small turtle. I didn’t have a good prediction for how he would respond to stock.

I know it sounds weird: separation anxiety and “favorite” in the same sentence. But it’s true, separation-related problem behaviors are one of my favorite types of behavioral challenges to treat. It wasn’t always this way. Early on in my career (over 17 years ago, long before I encountered Behavior Analysis), I was flummoxed by separation anxiety (SA). With the understanding of behavior that I did have at that time, it seemed reasonable that a “cry it out” approach (i.e., operant extinction) would work. I recommended the use of crates, baby gates, or pens - as many trainers did and still do - and I had very limited success. Eventually this became a behavioral challenge that I avoided as a trainer. So what changed?

Ran here! As I have begun to consider my next dog (which will hopefully join our family in, oh, 5-10 years), I have been learning everything I can about breeders, expectations, requirements, timelines, red flags, and green flags. I don’t have all the answers, and I am sure that there is a lot of nuance in every aspect of this. However, I have put this list together while considering what I am looking for: a dog who is as healthy as possible, a breeder who will offer support to both me and my dog, and someone who adheres to what I have found to be “best practices.”