The More You Know

How Poor Communication Skills Can Lead to Client Failure

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:51:59 +0000

At a recent professional meeting we heard our friend and colleague, Ms. Pia Silvani, CPDT-KA, talk about communication failures that interfere with client compliance with our recommendations. Pia is the Director of Behavior and Training at St. Huberts Animal Welfare Center in Madison, NJ and a much sought-after speaker on behavior and training issues.
Over the years, Pia had notice patterns in the failures of her clients and those of the trainers she supervised. In her talk, she described several of the failures and their effects on the training efforts. We’ll briefly summarize 7 of those here.

Assessing Aggression in Dogs – Can This Fido Be Saved?

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:44:29 +0000

This is the presentation that Dr. Estep gave at the Professional Animal Behavior Associates Weekend Seminar “Dog-Dog Interactions: The Good The Bad and The Ugly” in Guelph, Ontario, Canada in May, 2010. The two hours-plus lecture is divided into an Introduction and seven segments.

Before the Introduction segment find the notes for the attendees that I prepared and a three page document for you “ Factors to Consider in a Risk Assessment of Dogs.” These are available for all BEN members.
The audio recordings are posted below with the associated Powerpoint Slides right above them in zipped format. These are available for our Pro Members. Pro-D members will find the downloads of the audios below the final videos.
There are also 6 short videos that were shown in the 7th segment and those are posted below the 7th audio.
Listen to the audio, follow along with the PDF of the PowerPoint presentation, and watch the video clips used in the lecture. Let us know what you think!

Idaho VMA Proceeding Notes

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:28:37 +0000

We will be traveling to Coeur d’Alene Idaho on August 12th, 2010 for the state VMA annual meeting. On Friday the 13th, we’ll be presenting on four topics – the descriptions are below. We’ve given YOU – our BEN members access to our proceeding notes. We plan on recording our lectures and making those available to you as soon as we can prepare them after the conference. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the notes. There is also a file of Client Handouts.

Dog Training Instructor Special Audio

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:51:52 +0000

As an "extra" for our Pro-D Members, below you will find both the streaming and downloadable version of the audio recording from Session 1 of Ms. Pia Silvani’s popular course on "Unleashing Your Power as a Dog Training Instructor". The recording is divided into two parts.

Canine Ethology Discussion Session

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:28:34 +0000

As an "extra" for our Pro-D Members, below you will find both the streaming and downloadable version of the audio recording from Session 5 of our last "Shining the Light of Science on Canine Behavior" course. This is a discussion session during which we pose questions about what we’ve taught and also take questions from participants.

Risk Management for Dog Bites

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:46:19 +0000

We thought you might enjoy reading this article that we wrote for the John Liner Review – a risk management journal that is directed at insurance professionals. The article’s audience is trisk managers whose job is to minimize risk, insurance professionals that cover such risk and employers whose employees are exposed to the possibility of animal injuries.

Helping Dogs and Cats Co-Exist

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:34:34 +0000

As luck would have it, we had a request from a BEN member about more information on introducing cats to dogs, the same day a well known magazine called to ask for an interview on the same subject (more on that magazine in a future message).

So, we took this opportunity to add more information on this subject. Below you will find Suzanne’s Audio Answers to the questions posed by the magazine’s editor, that are also relevant to our BEN member’s request. We did not include the download option on this one for Pro-D members because the recording is so short – about 15 minutes.

Dog-Dog Aggression – Challenges and Safety

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:29:24 +0000

We ran across this video when following a claim about a "force free" training method that, we discovered, claims to use

Road Map for Helping With Behavior Problems

admin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:29:26 +0000

This is the presentation that Dr. Hetts gave for Professional Animal Behavior Associates in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The pre-conference day on Friday was generously presented free of charge to pet professionals and pet owners, compliments of PABA, prior to the weekend seminar on "Dog-Dog Interactions: The Good the Bad and The Ugly". You will also soon find the recordings from Suzanne and Dan’s presentations for that workshop posted here in BEN.

Below is Part One – the morning lecture Dr. Hetts gave on "A Road Map for Helping With Behavior Problems". She shared the day with Dr. Gary Landsberg. Her afternoon presentation – Part 2 will also be available here in BEN.

Listen to the audio, follow along with the PDF of the PowerPoint presentation, and watch the video clips used in the lecture. Members of BEN for 4 months or longer will be able to download the audio recording for their PERSONAL use ONLY!

Developing Safe Relationships Between Children and Dogs

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 03:58:52 +0000

This is a special bonus presentation we are giving to our BEN Pro members. It was primarily a bonus for attendees at our Canadian workshop for Professional Animal Behavior Associates, Inc. on "Dog-Dog Interactions: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". The topic was chosen to be related to Dog Bite Prevention Week that occurs every May.