The Bark Side

06/24/2025

🥹

Forgive him pls 😅😅😅

06/21/2025

Trust your gut & always advocate for your teammate. 💪🐶

06/19/2025

🥹 Isn’t he adorable?!

06/19/2025

Is your “cue” actually serving as a cue?

On a recent trip, I came across this door. On the other side of the door was a local bakery.

Apparently, past patrons overwhelmingly thought the door handle was the type that needed to be PUSHED to open the door.

To fix the situation, someone added a PULL sticker to the door.

Then, another sticker.

And another, and another.

There’s also the sticker on the glass, which is harder to read because of the glare. It states, “Handle Down And PULL.”

When a cue isn’t working, our first reaction is often to repeat the cue.

Or, we give the cue bigger or louder.

Rather than giving the cue repeatedly, a better strategy is to figure out, what changes do you need to make so that your cue will produce the desired behavior?

In the case of this door, many people may be getting tripped up by their past learning history. The handle looks like it should be pushed!

Instead of a multitude of stickers, a different handle design that helped to “cue” the behavior of pulling may have been a much more effective solution.

Want to know more about cues?

This post is a quick reminder that early registration for Behavior Explorer’s Cue Repair! course ends on June 20.

You can join Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz and Mary Hunter for four thought-provoking virtual sessions all about cues, stimulus control, poisoned cues, and more.

Registration and more info is available on the Behavior Explorer website.

06/19/2025

Even in the mess, there’s lots of love here 🐾❤️
— art by

06/18/2025

Always rule out medical issues.

‼️ If an “aggression expert” isn’t advocating for thorough investigation into possible pain as part of their work with you… they are NOT ethical! ‼️

This is a sensitive story, and as such names have been changed to protect my clients’ privacy and identity. The dog pictured below is mine.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been working with a family and their dog (we’ll call him “Benny”). A year ago, Benny turned from a loving family pet to suddenly guarding the lounge; anytime that someone made an unexpected move in the room or entered it, Benny would begin posturing and barking at them, which eventually escalated into jumping and grabbing at their clothes, and then bites that punctured the skin.

A physical examination at the vet didn’t yield any results, and Benny was taking multiple types of anxiety medication that didn’t touch his behaviour.

We started working together, and I asked them to have some scans done to further investigate pain. Behaviour changes are one of the first indicators of pain, but otherwise dogs are REALLY good at hiding pain and it can be easily missed, even in a vet exam.

Because they had already been to see the vet, I was met with some resistance. We did implement safety measures and some training strategies to try to help Benny feel more at ease in the lounge, but his behaviour wasn’t improving.

Eventually, Benny did have an MRI, and it was revealed that he has a chiari malformation in his brain - that is, part of his brain was pushing down into the spinal canal. We could have done all the training in the world but it wouldn’t have mattered, because this wasn’t a behaviour issue.

How many trainers would have slapped a shock collar on this poor dog, who was already suffering? How many would have simply said that he needed to learn boundaries or hear the word “no” and not looked any further? How many would say that it’s all well and good to use positive reinforcement, until it “doesn’t work” and then you need punishment?

It’s estimated that up to 80% of aggression cases have some kind of underlying medical issue. You NEED a behaviour expert who can liaise with your vet and who will advocate for *thorough* examination, not just a quick check over to tick a box.

It’s an unregulated industry. Be careful who you trust with your dog, even if they call themselves an expert or have tons of followers. And if your dog’s behaviour suddenly changes, they’re probably in pain.

06/14/2025

It always fascinates me how my dogs’ behavior is a direct reflection of my own.

Let’s get comfortable with the uncomfortable! We can’t always do it right, sometimes our actions might increase undesirable behaviour in our dogs.

The first thing to help this is to realise it. Then we are almost there. Working with behaviour challenges is as much about working on our own reactions as our dogs.

Because it’s a journey and the best part is we get to go through it together!

🐶 Find exercises for both dog and guardian on the membership ❤️

06/13/2025

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