You thought it was a good idea to get a puppy for Christmas? Right, well now it’s time to shape up because you have just become responsible for a life. You’ve done the jokes – “A dog is not just for Christmas, with a bit of luck there’ll be some left over for sandwiches on […]
Today I saw a Facebook post that took issue with trainers and behaviourists who recommend that people should not own certain breeds of dogs because they come with difficult behavioural traits. There were many comments on it, both challenging and in support. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a mountain man and […]
I’m being instructed in more and more cases where people have been injured when they intervened in a dog fight. The typical scenario is that they will be happily walking their dog along, sometimes on sometimes off the lead, when another dog comes along off-lead and attacks their dog. It can happen anywhere but is […]
Hi, I’m Ted, and I’m fed up. Every day I go for a walk with Big David and we generally have a great time, sniffing around, checking out the pee-noticeboards, leaving my mark, riding in the bike basket between bridle-path and park before coming home for a good towelling down. So why am I fed […]
Last year when we managed to explain to a court that a dog that bit a lady when he was tied up outside a supermarket did not constitute a danger to public safety (we think she accidentally backed him to the end of his lead and then stood on his foot when he couldn’t get […]
There are many new things that appear around the festive season and I know some dogs can get a bit confused about the best ways to behave, so here are my festive tips for fun-loving pooches to get the best out of the season… Trees: People often bring a tree into the house at this […]
In these uncertain times we all have to try to scrape by as best we can and, to coin a phrase, “look after the pennies …” or as those on the Scottish side of my family would say, usually after several pints of heavy, “mony a mickle maks a muckle”. So I got to thinking, […]
Yes folks, it’s what we always knew, but now we have proper evidence that playing with your dog makes them clever, in the findings of a great new study out from Lincoln University[1]. I’m on record as saying that there are no really robust dog behaviour studies, mostly because they lack numbers, and in that […]
It is Royal Mail’s Dog Awareness Week (no, I wasn’t aware of it either!) and they’ve published the dog attack figures for April 2014 to April 2015, which are DOWN by 10% from the previous year to 2660. Whilst even one attack by a dog is one too many, to place this in context the […]
There’s a bit of a furore on t’internet. Apparently “Science says” dogs don’t like to be hugged, and the face-twitter-sphere is awash with the repercussions. I like “science”. I like the way it informs and changes over time. So where did this “science” come from? It was widely reported in the Telegraph and the New York […]