

The Reactive Response
StartFragment What is a “Reactive Response”? A reactive dog or a dog who display a reactive response, is a dog who is highly stimulated and reacts strongly and/or shows obvious high levels of stress and anxiety when faced with mild to moderate exposure to specific stimuli, and/or toward certain environmental situations. When it comes to dogs, many people pair the label "reactive" with the label "aggressive", however, the two are not synonymous. A reactive dog is a dog who is


Relaxation Techniques
StartFragment Many people these days have realized the importance of de-compressing from their busy lives through such means as doing Yoga, Thai Chi and Meditation. However, teaching our dogs to practice relaxation through similar means is still in it's infancy. Dogs are so closely linked to our lives and so much a part of our family these days, that a busy and active home life is going to trickle down to them as well. Dogs are a different species then us of-course, however,


What are they saying? Dog to Dog (MoJo and JamJam)
The Scenario:
These two were set up - told the stay for a photo. The discomfort you see, is not due to not knowing each other but being set up too close to each other and told to stay with a camera pointed at them and more than one onlooker.
These two are the same age - one day apart and knew each other well. They went to puppy class together and the Toller came to the Parsons house for grooming. Toller (MoJo):
Muzzle tight, cheeks tight, furrowed brows, ears back. Body is


Can I Jump Up and Kiss Your Eyes
Our dogs talk to us every day! - but do we listen?
On average we don't. Not because we don't want to, but because their language is foreign to us. For the most part we expect dogs to learn our language; "sit", "down", "come", "want to go for a walk", "din-din", . and so on.
However, we are not always so good at learning their language. Which, if you think about it, it is pretty weird, because we have shared our lives with dogs for centuries.
Probably the biggest reason fo