Dog Crazy Lady - Dog Training & Behavior Consulting

20/09/2025

Next weekend, sorry for late notice, just heard about it-

Rowdy to Refined 2 Day Workshop, September 27-28, 2025 Your instructor is Lucy McKnight CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, PMCT1 Help your impulsive, exuberant dog learn to find their Zen. Dog’s don’t c…

17/09/2025

My daughter volunteers at this shelter just over the state line in Delaware. If you’re looking to adopt but haven’t found your match in town, this might be a great place to look. She sends me cute pics every time she visits, and they have had a good variety of dogs.

11/09/2025

On September 11, 2001, as chaos unfolded in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, a guide dog named Roselle became an unexpected hero. She calmly led her blind owner, Michael Hingson, and a group of over 30 people down 78 flights of stairs to safety. Despite the smoke, noise, and confusion, Roselle remained focused and composed, helping others stay calm simply by her presence.

During the descent, Roselle paused only once, to comfort a woman having a panic attack. She gently nuzzled and kissed her, offering reassurance in the most human way a dog could. Her quiet strength and unwavering loyalty helped transform fear into courage, allowing the group to continue their escape even as the building trembled around them.

Roselle’s actions that day became a symbol of trust, training, and the extraordinary bond between guide dogs and their handlers. She continued to serve until 2007 and passed away in 2011, but her legacy lives on as a reminder that heroism can come on four paws, with a wagging tail and a heart full of love.

11/09/2025

Interested in helping pets have a better experience at the vet clinic and making it a safer experience for the humans involved, reducing risk of workplace injuries? This webinar should be interesting to vets, techs, clinic staff, and pet guardians.

ACVB Webinar: "Cooperative Care: Giving our Patients Agency” with Dr. Liz Stelow

Thu, Sep 25, 2025 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EDT

Price: 40.00 USD

Veterinary medicine strives to do no harm. But many patients leave their appointments feeling emotionally worse off than when they arrived. Pre-visit medications can go a long way toward alleviating the stress our patients experience. But cooperative care can help, as well. This module explores the types of cooperative care that can be worked on at home by our clients and the types we can use during veterinary visits and hospitalizations.

06/09/2025

CANCER FREE: A 9-year-old golden retriever is now cancer free thanks to a novel treatment that is currently in clinical trials.

01/09/2025

He knew there was a good chance of getting shocked and it still brought him to his knees. I feel so sorry for dogs with these collars.

39.4K likes, 147 comments. “Day 8 The Invisible Fence Line Challenge ⚡️ tag someone you would play this with. ”

28/08/2025

25/08/2025

Someone asked a question on one of my videos where I explain about eight different reasons why a dog might behave aggressively. 

23/08/2025

“Labeling these shelters as “kill shelters” only deepens the burden. It places blame on the very people who are showing up every day to do the hardest work in animal welfare. These are not people who have failed animals—they are people who need support, not blame.”

Across the country, I see animal shelters are doing everything they can to save lives in a system strained by pet overpopulation. But not all shelters operate under the same conditions. Understanding the difference between municipal and private shelters—and the critical role each plays—can help ...

23/08/2025

This book about animal perception was just highly recommended to me, so I’m sharing with you-

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A "thrilling" (The New York Times), "dazzling" (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong
"One of this year's finest works of narrative nonfiction."--Oprah Daily

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader's Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called "the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes."

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL - FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE - FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

Buy An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us at Half Price Books.

10/08/2025

The Cruel Irony of Punishing a Dog Already in Distress

There’s a painful irony in the dog world: Dog's being punished, who are already struggling to cope, who are often reacting because something in their world already feels punishing, frightening, or overwhelming.

Instead of asking, "What’s happening inside this dog? What are they trying to communicate?" instead " lets punish the dog"

A shock.
A spray bottle or collar
A prong collar, choke chain etc.

That dog is often already in distress. Their behaviour was a symptom, not the disease. Their reaction was an attempt to say, “I can’t handle this. Help.”

And yet, people respond by piling on more stress, more fear, more aversion, and then somehow framing it as a favour.

“I’m correcting him for his own good.” “She needs to learn.” “This is how you train a balanced dog.”" Now they can go off lead and be a dog".

You can’t scare fear out of a dog, but you can shut them up.
You can’t correct trauma into trust, but you can shut them up
You can’t punish away panic, but you can shut them up.

Quiet doesnt mean coping

My approach is that dogs need understanding. They need to be heard. And we owe them the grace to ask why before we decide how to respond.

This doesnt mean i dont believe in boundaries, or guidance.

It means I believe in being fair, being compassionate, and working hard to reduce worries whilst striving for change not just shuting the undesirable behaviour down.

31/07/2025

😕

PLEASE RECONSIDER GROOMING YOUR DOG WHILST OUT ON WALKS (or in the garden!)

This - along with letting them swim in waterways - could be killing wildlife.


It's that time of year when you see random distributions of dog fluff out on walks.

Kanita is also blowing her coat, and Mohawk has been having a big coat change too recently. There's something very satisfying about gently pulling those loose tufts of hair out. If you know, you know.


I don't blame people for thinking that it's easier to groom a super floofy dog outside to save covering their house in hair- BUT if that dog receives anti-parasitic treatment, this may be harming wildlife.

A study in the Netherlands detected two active substances used in routine pet anti-parasitic treatments in the nests of great t**s- who had collected hair in order to build their nests.

Another study by The University of Sussex found that screened nests contained 17 out of 20 insecticides screened for. 100% of nests contained fipronil and 89% contained imidacloprid.
A higher number of unhatched eggs and dead chicks were associated with higher numbers of chemicals present in the nests (with dog hair being used to build the nests by the birds).


Many of these chemicals in these treatments are thought to be harmful to birds. It is also thought that they are damaging to insect populations (including bees) as well as contributing to pollution of waterways and damaging aquatic ecosystems - contributed by people letting their dogs swim in ponds, lakes, streams, rivers etc.


If you routinely use parasite control medication on your dog please do not let them swim outdoors (especially soon after treatment) and avoid grooming them outside (or bag up the hair as you groom).

There are some suggestions that oral medications are less damaging, but they don't just sit in the digestive system. They are transported around the bloodstream- which supplies nutrients and oxygen to the whole body. Toxins leave the body via excrement, urine, sweat, hair and skin cells- albeit predominantly via the former two.

Whilst topical treatments pose a greater risk - especially soon after treatment- it cannot be assumed that there is no negative affect from oral treatments. The research identified that dog hair is linked to bird deaths and that specifically states that dogs owned by volunteers donating nests received parasite control via collars, spot on and tablets.
Chemicals from Nexguard and Bravecto were not screened for in the study and thus are not ruled out as safe nor established as harmful (to birds).


The recommended frequency of use of these products continues to be called into question, as is the risk of adverse side effects in pets!

Veternarians are being encouraged to prescribe them based on risk to the individual.
Assessing individual risk is not easy for veternarians to do in the time that they have, so you can help your vet help you by intensively reading information on these products rather than administering them every 1-3 months in blind faith that it's the right thing to do and without consequence.

Our wildlife is in decline and if we care about nature- we all need to do our bit.

That may include reviewing the specific medication you purchase from your vet or you may decide to use them less frequently, such as treating as needed or seasonally (instead of across the year).
You may delay letting your dog swim post treatment for as long as possible, or consider alternative prevention such as worm counts, flea combing or natural repellents (although do note, some ingredients in these could still be toxic to some species of wildlife).


Again, whether to treat or not should be down to INDIVIDUAL RISK. What poses a risk to individuals in one area may differ to others elsewhere.

But it's also your personal choice and I want to make it clear that this post is NOT telling people to NOT treat their pets but simply to be aware of the potential impact of such treatments and to adjust our habits (swimming, grooming outside) accordingly.


Are there other things that damage the environment? Of course.
But this is a page about dogs, so content will be relevant to dogs.

You can use the fact that XY and Z also harm the environment as a justification for doing nothing, or you can consider whether there are small changes you are able to make. The cumulative effect is what causes these issues to escalate, and thus the cumulative effect is also capable of making some positive change.


Note: If you don’t use anti parasitics on your dog & groom them outside, then the hair may be beneficial for the birds. However, do consider that grooming products and other medications may pose a risk - should you use these.

These were the resources linked into the comments, but Ive opted to bring them here for ease. Within some of these you can be linked to the research on this topic and you will find much more detail on this emotive topic.

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/66973

https://www.veterinaryirelandjournal.com/small-animal/359-cat-and-dog-parasiticides-and-the-environment

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969725000737?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=908a988c1c6d63c1

https://www.songbird-survival.org.uk/post/veterinary-drugs-found-in-bird-nests/

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/243875/toxic-flea-tick-treatments-polluting-uk/

https://www.pan-uk.org/garden-birds-are-being-poisoned-by-pet-flea-treatments/

https://www.broads-authority.gov.uk/looking-after/managing-land-and-water/water-quality/flea-treatments-and-their-impact-on-water-quality

https://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/blog/flea-treatment-toxic-to-wildlife

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/23/flea-treatments-cats-dogs-environmental-hazard

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7738705/

https://www.bva.co.uk/take-action/our-policies/responsible-use-of-parasiticides-for-cats-and-dogs/

https://www.bsava.com/position-statement/parasite-control/