Dog Behavior

Getting your dog ready for its first show is an exciting and potentially highly rewarding time.

It’s hard enough to keep up with your own to-do list, but do you ever stop to think about your dog’s daily schedule?

Joanne Stout of Oceanside, California, admitted she got impatient with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Rusty. "I am constantly tripping over him," she says. "He is always under foot," she said.

New York City graduate student Lacey Brown was walking her roommate’s German shepherd last fall when the dog lunged and bit an elderly neighbor on the wrist.

Most dogs behave in ways that may seem downright dumb. Drinking water from the toilet bowl. Eating grass. Sniffing the waste of other canines. But there are reasons for these behaviors: Dogs prefer cold water over stagnant water that’s been sitting in a dish, grass is natural roughage and may induce vomiting if they have a stomachache, and urine and poop are the newspapers of the dog world, communicating who did what where and when.

The movie Up features a dog with a collar that translates his thoughts into sentences like "I have just met you, and I love you!" Real dogs, however, speak more with body language than with barks.

A few years ago, veterinarian Sophia Yin took her Australian cattle dog, Zoe, to a horse ranch and let the dog sleep in the stables overnight. In the middle of the night, Dr. Yin was startled by a strange, loud howling sound.

Children go through the "terrible 2s", a developmental stage characterized by whining, misbehavior and perpetual inquisitiveness. Dogs do something similar, only they never grow out of it.

When a wolf bites, it can inflict up to 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch. Yet when two wolves square off in a playful wrestling match, each usually barely grazes the skin surface of its rival. Why?

When a technician comes to my house, my next-door neighbor’s friendly yet hyper dog often dashes outside. Goober jumps on the startled individual in the middle of the street – I jumped too the first few times the large dog leaped on me. But a stern "No!" and "Sit!" calms him down and leads to "the look."