Members of the Companion Animal Psychology Book Club will recognize the photo above. It's a stock photo, but it's one of my favourites that I've used since I began blogging.
Promising results from a pilot study of synthetic cat-appeasing pheromones (Feliway Multicat) for aggression between cats that live together. Photo: Samarsky / Shutterstock Cat owners know only too well that cats can be choosy. As solitary hunters, the domestic cat can do just fine alone and does not have to be friends with other members of the species. On the other hand, cats can live in social groups, especially in colonies of female cats and their offspring, when female cats will help care for each other’s young. Many people have multiple pet cats and they aren’t always friends. It is obvious cats don’t get along if they fight. But there are also more subtle signs of cat aggression, such as when one cat blocks another cat’s access to a resource like the litter box. As well as bouts of aggression, when cats don’t get along they may hold urine for too long, pee outside the box, suffer feline idiopathic cystitis, over-eat or lose weight, or sometimes (if they have outdoors access) one...
A user-friendly guide to understanding negative reinforcement in dog training – and the three alternatives you should know about. Photo: Angyalosi Beata /Shutterstock If you are new to dog training, or want to understand some of the language of dog training, this article is for you. It covers the technical definition of negative reinforcement in dog training, examples of how it is used, what research tells us about negative reinforcement, and alternatives that you can use instead (along with some common mistakes people make, so you know how to get it right). This article is part of a series of guides that also covers positive reinforcement and positive punishment in dog training. Let’s start with the technical definition. What is negative reinforcement? Negative reinforcement is one way to train dogs (and other animals). Negative reinforcement means taking something away that increases or maintains the frequency of a behaviour. The ‘negative’ part refers to something being removed, ...
Everything you need to know about the use of positive punishment in dog training. Photo: JJ Photographer/Shutterstock If you are a new dog owner, or even if you’ve been around dogs for a while, this article is for you. It covers the technical definition of positive punishment, examples of what it is, what we know about the risks of using it and what professional organizations advise. Let’s get the technical definition out of the way first. What is positive punishment in dog training? You’ll have noticed I said positive punishment instead of just punishment. In everyday language, we often say punishment when what we technically mean is positive punishment. We can also have negative punishment, but that will be the topic of another post. Punishment means something that reduces the likelihood of a behaviour happening again i.e. the behaviour goes down in frequency. And positive means that something is added. So positive punishment means adding something after the dog did a behaviour ...
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