Move over Cesar Millan and Victoria Stilwell there is a NEW dog trainer in town. Who is this new trainer you may ask. It’s none other than my husband, Ryan McGlothlin. You see, when we first moved in together, there was a slight adjustment period. Oh, no…not for us. It was Ryan and Parker who needed to adjust to each other. You see, before Ryan moved in, Parker was the “man of the house.” He got all of my undivided attention as well as getting the prized spot in bed next to me. However, when Ryan moved in, things changed just a bit. For one thing, two people and a dog did not fit comfortably in a double bed.

I guess you could say that Parker did not take the change well. As way of letting us know his true feelings toward the situation, he would lift his leg. But his marking was not random or arbitrary. No, he was very deliberate in where and what he marked. Now, if you’re thinking he was only peeing on Ryan’s things, you would be 100% correct. None of my stuff was touched, but Ryan’s jackets, shoes, clothes, bags…all took a hit. We scolded Parker each time we found a drenched item, but to no avail. Parker kept up the bad behavior. Enter, Ryan the dog behaviorist. He said he had had enough and if Parker peed on one more thing, he would take Parker’s favorite toy and pee on it and see how Parker liked it. Now, I’m sure at some point we’ve all made this threat but very few actually follow through. Ryan, however, is not one of the “few.” That’s right! One day after we discovered a freshly marked jacket, Ryan said, “I warned him,” and went running upstairs. Before I could stop him, there he was in the bathroom…peeing on Parker’s prized toy!! After he had left his mark, he handed the toy over to Parker. To my dismay, Parker willingly took the toy and pranced around the apartment with it in his mouth. I shook my head, thinking this was the craziest thing I had ever seen. However, crazy or not...IT WORKED! From that day on, the marking stopped. In fact, from that point on Ryan and Parker became the best of buds.

And now you all know why I married Ryan…because he won the peeing contest!

This post was sent by Billie Kerfoot.

Like many people I know, I am concerned about the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Just seeing those helpless birds covered in dark black, slick oil makes me want to cry. I have a very big soft spot for animals in distress (which is why I do rescue work). That is why I was excited to see a segment on the news about a local hairdresser who was sending hair clippings to the Gulf Coast. You see, this organization collects donated hair. My ears perked up as I remembered a quite shaggy Lexi running around downstairs. Could they use pet hair, I wondered? So, I contacted the news media who gave me the web site of Matter of Trust (www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html) which was collecting hair for booms in the Gulf. It seems that hair (yes all kinds of hair) soaks up the oil and the organization is eager for any hair it can get its hands on.

I decided that this was one way I could give back to my national community. So, armed with my clippers, I set Lexi on the table and clipped and scissored. Two hours later…she no longer looked like a wooly teddy bear. Feeling quite accomplished, I then turned my attention to Parker. After that, I was on a roll! I picked up our blind rescue springer, Peri, setting her carefully on the table. She stood there patiently, while I clipped her all over. Taking notice of how much hair I already had after just three dogs, I decided to invite my friend Cathy over with her springer, Jasmine. Before too long, Jasmine looked more like a fat beagle than a springer! When there were no more springers of mine (or my friends) to groom I turned to my vet. They have golden retrievers and the bag with brown, black, and white hair was soon joined by golden tresses. Tomorrow I will tap into the “mother load” by going to the vet clinic and loading up all the dog hair I can from their grooming facility. I even decided that the cats should pitch in their share as well. It turns out that between my two cats, there was enough hair to make another cat!

If you are interested in helping the environment, and you would like to do something good with all that dog hair, just contact Matter of Trust and lend a helping hand to clean up the oceans, seas, and rivers.

“Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job.”  ~Franklin P. Jones

We can all smile at the truth behind this quote. Taking care of animals can truly be a labor of love. Today, however, I want to share how my dogs actually paved the way for my career path. As some of you know, I graduated the University of Virginia with a PhD in neuroscience. It sounds super impressive and I will admit that some of the things I do are really cool (yes, that’s the technical term for it!), but anyone who has animals can understand the basic principles I work with day in and day out. Discovered by Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900’s, animals are motivated by food. In fact, they can make associations between anything novel (and not inherently motivating) and a food reward. Termed, classical conditioning, this is what every dog owner / trainer uses to teach their dogs. Growing up with animals and a mother who had been training dogs since she herself was a little girl, I took for granted how easy it was to use reward to get my puppy to “sit” or “down” on command. In fact, with a little encouragement from my mother, I came up with my first middle school science fair project that did not involve plants and sunlight. She suggested that I use my “animal training talent” and do something with my guinea pig. We sat down and decided that I would use classical conditioning to train my guinea pig that a bell predicted a food reward. I did these bell-food pairings over multiple days till one day, after I rang the bell, the guinea pig starting making excited vocalizations termed “wheeking”. I presented the project at the fair and ended up with 2nd place!

Not to be outdone, I decided that next year for the science fair, I was going to use my hamster (if you’re trying to keep track of my childhood animals…it’s a LOT and includes rabbits and horses to the already long list.) With the help of my grandfather, I made two equally difficult mazes. I made it so that one maze always had a food reward at the end whereas the other maze never had food at the end. I then timed how long it took my hamster to run each maze every day for a week. Surprise, surprise, learning is accelerated when there is a food reward at the end of the maze.

Although I only placed 4th that year, I had started something that would eventually shape the rest of my life. You see, due to this early experience with dogs, guinea pigs and hamsters I decided to work in a behavioral lab as an undergraduate in college. Turns out, I’m really good and training rats. One thing led to another and I decided to major in psychology and pursue animal behavior. I soon realized that in order to understand behavior, you had to know what was going on in the brain. From there everything kind of snowballed. I took a technician job at Johns Hopkins University, applied and got in to graduate school at UVA, graduated in 5 years with my PhD and moved one week after graduation to North Carolina to start working as a Post Doctorial fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill. Each and every experiment I conducted along the way dealt with reward and either classical or operant (must perform a behavior to get the reward) conditioning.

Throughout my whole career I have always been successful. I mainly attribute my success to luck, but I can’t neglect the fact that I have a way with animals. I have spent my whole life (even prenatally) with animals. Because of this comfort level, animals tend to relax around me and trust in what I tell them to do. Even now, I am called the “rat whisperer” in lab because I can take a very scared and freaked out rat and calm him down within seconds. Although this kind of influence over animals can be learned, I feel that my success in gradschool and now as a postdoc is due to the fact that I was immersed in a world of dogs and the basic principles of learning my whole life. So I guess you could say that I owe all that I am and everything I have accomplished to my dogs and my mother (and stubborn persistence).

Happy Mother’s Day Mom! Thanks for always being there!

I may be young, but I do remember a time without internet. I remember the green (or orange) screens with the big block type. And while a part of me thinks that things were simpler before the world wide web, there is another part that does not know how I would survive without it. In fact, not so long ago, I had to spend two whole days without internet in my apartment. I was one phone call away from badgering some IT guy when I realized that my modem has a “Stand by” button. I am sure there is a good reason why modems have stand by buttons, but at that point, I really could not think of any (besides driving people insane). I kept wondering how on earth the button got pressed. Then as I looked over to my quadruped friends and the light bulb went off in my brain.

About two days ago, Justin and Amber were rough housing throughout the apartment. They took turns chasing and running and pouncing. I thought nothing of it since this is a common occurrence. However, I did hear a loud thud. I turned around to find Justin under my desk with stars in his eyes. Amber, apparently (although she looked quite innocent at the time) had pounced and knocked Justin into the desk. Unbeknownst to me, Justin must have hit the modem in just the right spot to hit the stand by button but not actually knock the whole thing over. If I didn’t know better, I would almost swear that they did this on purpose so I would be forced to spend more time with them at night rather than with my computer. Well played dogs….well played!