Animals Unfolded

Dogs are intelligent. They've demonstrated that their mental abilities are on par with that of a 2-3 year old child, but in one area, dogs leap ahead: their ability to pick up on when they are being misled. Canines have lived alongside of us for a period of time that would make it seem unlikely that they wouldn't be able to figure out many things about our behavior, but some concepts are quite complex, for example, untruthfulness. A research team from Kyoto University wanted to delve into whether or not dogs could recognize that behavior (or how long it would take to do so). The researchers, led by Akiko Takoka, decided to keep things simple, and the payoff was surprisingly telling.  A pair of experiments were done in a study titled,  " Do dogs follow behavioral cues from an unreliable human? ", with the results appearing in an October 2014 issue of Animal Cognition. In the first experiment, 24 dogs were used, and it worked in three phases.  (I...

Dogs love to chew. They need to. It's satisfying, and can mitigate anxiety. Indulging this healthy behavior is usually not a problem nor something that we give a lot of thought to since there are so many products on the market that are safe for supervised chew time or when our favorite pups are alone.  Of course, we need to take some things into consideration, including how powerful of a chewer a dog is or what their preferences are.  Traditional choices Beef rawhides are the ultimate in chewing pleasure for dogs, there's no doubt. They're tough, long-lasting and provide they kind of satisfying mouthfeel that dogs crave. They do get a bad rap for their indigestibility and the potential hazard for choking, but honestly I've found that with my own dogs and charges whose owners supply them, they are quite safe so long as chew time is supervised carefully. I simply take the rawhide away when they show evidence of being dangerous.  Bully sticks, tracheas, b...