Bird’s Eye: We start with one vision of what dogs look like: bred and coiffed and perfectly conforming to breed standards. (Full disclosure: my dog is different.) Then we look at sled dogs in Greenland, and end up with a seriously balanced dog strutting his stuff. Enjoy!
* Westminster Dog Show National Geographic
38 show photos.
* The Cold Patrol: Sled Dogs National Geographic
* Dog Balances On Chain Bits and Pieces
Bird’s Eye: The bird is suspicious about training dogs, particularly bird dogs. And he’s right to be suspicious, as most of what you’ve seen on TV is increasingly shown to be …uh… just plain wrong. Dogs aren’t obsessed with alpha vs beta. Alpha wolves don’t fight for their position. The same guidelines that work with children work with dogs: no violence,loving positive reinforcement. But we included a cute video of a dog learning how to howl from a wolf, because we couldn’t resist.
* De-Bunking the “Alpha Dog” Theory Whole Dog Journal Article (Thanks, Cat!)
The alpha myth is everywhere. Google “alpha dog” on the Internet and you get more than 85 million hits. Really. While not all the sites are about dominating your dog, there are literally millions of resources out there – websites, books, blogs, television shows, veterinarians, trainers and behavior professionals – instructing you to use force and intimidation to overpower your dog into submission. They say that you, the human, must be the alpha. They’re all wrong. Every single one of them
…While professing that “training dogs is about building a relationship that is based on respect and love and understanding,” even [The Monks of New Skete’s] most recent book, Divine Canine: The Monks’ Way to a Happy, Obedient Dog (2007), is still heavy on outdated, erroneous dominance theory.
* Cesar Millan – The Dog Whisperer: Critics Answers Lisa Mullinax (Thanks, Cat!)
Since writing The Dog Whisperer Controversy, I have received emails from fans who vehemently disagree with what I have written. In an effort to dispel many of the myths viewers have about the show, I have responded to the most common arguments below.
Your article was biased!
To be clear, I am quite biased on this subject. Just as a nutritionist would not write an article equally weighing the pros and cons of junk food, I am not compelled or obligated to present a balanced view of the show. I have, however, presented a factual argument.
The show gives an inaccurate representation of dog behavior that ignores everything we know about animal behavior today. My bias also stems from years of personal experience, along with the combined experience of my colleagues who have personally seen the results of these types of methods used to suppress problem behaviors.
*Puppy Learning from Wolf Howl Youtube
Bird’s Eye: Adam Gopnik is my all-time favourite essayist, and his New Yorker essay on dogs is a great one: full of entertaining stories and fascinating information (including a quick summary of John Bradshaw’s “In Defence of Dogs”). Then a fascinating film on how baboons kidnap feral puppies and raise them as pets, and a look at the US Army and its dogs. (Can you get your dog to skydive with you? )
* How Did The Dog Become Our Master? Adam Gopnik via Almost 50
A year ago, my wife and I bought a dog for our ten-year-old daughter, Olivia. We had tried to fob her off with fish, which died, and with a singing blue parakeet, which she named Skyler, but a Havanese puppy was what she wanted, and all she wanted. With the diligence of a renegade candidate pushing for a political post, she set about organizing a campaign: quietly mustering pro-dog friends as a pressure group; introducing persuasive literature (John Grogan’s ‘’Marley& Me”); demonstrating reliability with bird care.
…My wife and I looked at each other with a wild surmise: the moment parents become parints, creatures beyond convincing who exist to be convinced. When it carne to dogs, we shared a distaste that touched the fringe of disgust and flirted with the edge of phobia. I was bitten by a nasty German-shepherd guard dog when I was about eight – not a terrible bite but traumatic all the same – and it led me ever after to cross streets and jump nervously at the sight of any its kind. My wife’s objections were narrowly aesthetic: the smells, the slobber, the shit. We both disliked dog owners in their dog-owning character: the empty laughter as the dog jumped up on you; the relentless apologies for the dog’s bad behavior, along with the smiling assurance that it was all actually rather cute. Though I could read, and even blurb, friends’ books on dogs, I felt about them as if the same friends had written books on polar exploration: I could grasp it as a subject worthy of extended poetic description, but it was not a thing I had any plans to pursue myself “Dogs are failed humans,” a witty friend said, and I agreed.
We were, however, doomed, and knew it…
* In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw – review The Guardian
As a canine expert and dog-lover, Bradshaw is dismayed that our treatment of dogs is based on so many mistaken beliefs and assumptions. He wants to set the record straight now because canine science has made huge advances in recent decades.
He starts by demolishing the notion that dogs are essentially aggressive creatures seeking dominance, which is based on discredited research into wolf packs. It is now known that wolves – the direct ancestors of dogs – actually live in harmonious family groups. Packs are not dominated by “alpha wolves”, but are fundamentally cooperative. Bradshaw is determined that the “dominance theory” be banished. But while enlightened trainers and owners have got the message, many more still subscribe to techniques aimed at ingraining fear and subservience into dogs. For Bradshaw, these are not only misguided and cruel, but joyless.
* Baboons Kidnap Feral Puppies To Raise As Pets Youtube 5 minutes
* War Dog – An FP Photo Essay Rebecca Frankel Foreign Policy
Dog’s Eye: As a dog lover, I try and avoid sites like the “Dogs in Halloween Costumes” or (even worse, trust me) “Lobster Dogs”. But these are some impressive images of dogs, (and only one is Rui 
)
* Extreme Dogs More Intelligent Life (Thanks Diana!)
* Parkour Dog youtube
