Chewed Slippers

Petspertise : Advice, news and reviews for doggie people, by doggie people (and one special doggie)

Posts Tagged ‘roger mugford’

Lusty new play pals will learn to play nicely

Posted by Roger Mugford - The Mindspert on the 28th September 2009

Cynthia asked the Petsperts:

“After my 15 year old male Lab died I rescued another female Labrador cross 3 weeks ago. She is 4 years approx, has obviously had puppies and was spayed 3 days before I took her. I always walk with a friend, twice a day, with her large 9 year old male. For 3 weeks he has blanked her but now he just will not leave her alone. Is it a male dominance issue? So how do you work with that? He is twice her size and very strong. She has held her own on the streets until now and doesn’t want any more males bothering her, so tries to get him away. Our fear is that he will end up hurting her back if nothing else. We tried to let them sort it out but in the end Poppy was getting distressed.What can we do?”

—

Dear Lab enthusiast,

It has taken an unusually long 3 weeks for mere toleration of your new young bitch to become infatuation by your friends old dog. Rejoice! It should work out just fine as their play becomes better synchronised and more complex as time passes. It is a joy to have dogs with integrated behaviours like this, and helps you to get over the loss of your previous dog.

Do come back to me if the problem persists in a few weeks.

Roger

The Animal Behaviour Centre

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Posted in Dog behaviour | 2 Comments »

Welcome to the Petspertise Blog

Posted by ali on the 15th July 2009

Ali & The Chunkster

Well it certainly took its time, but the Petspertise blog is finally here (after having launched the site all the way back in April!).

So why are we bothering with a blog at all? Good question.

Chewed Slippers is the brainchild of one Ali Ghobadi (me). I wanted to cut through the swathes of samey products currently on offer in the market, to bring people carefully selected stuff with tangible benefits that were luxurious but affordable. (To find out more about the rather personal story of how Chewed Slippers came about, just click here to navigate to the About Us page). This is why it took over 6 months of researching the market to put together the product range. And of course, I couldn’t have done that all by myself. As passionate as I am about dogs, I wanted proven expertise behind our products, so that people feel totally confident that what they’re buying is the best in the market. This is why I enlisted the help some of the brightest stars in the industry, the pet experts - or Petsperts®.

However, we couldn’t put all the info about the products onto our normal website because that would just look messy and it wouldn’t give you an opportunity to give us your opinions. That’s another hugely important part of Chewed Slippers - interactivity. We’re pretty confident we have most of what Fido could ever dream of, but we definitely think we can do better with your help.

And so our blog, Petspertise® was born. The blog is going to cover all things doggy from how we came to choose our products, to tips on looking after your pet to entertaining stories from Chunky, our canine blogger. And we would LOVE to hear from you. We want to know what you want us to provide (even if it doesn’t exist yet), how you want to be able to buy it (is the website working as well as it could?) and how you’d like it delivered. And anything else on your mind! We want to know your thoughts so that we can make Chewed Slippers the best purveyor of premium pooch products in the UK!

Before I leave you, a few quick introductions to our Petsperts®:
Chunky is the star credited with choosing our name (see the video) and soon-to-be prolific blogger of inane canine musings.
Dr. Roger Mugford is an internationally renowned animal psychologist and the pioneer of animal behavioural therapy in the UK, founding The Animal Behaviour Centre in 1979.
Bethan New is a devoted mum to dog and cat team, Bailey and Misty, and a registered veterinary nurse of 8 years’ experience.
David Jackson is one of the very few people in the UK with specialist animal nutrition training and is passionate about the link between an animal’s diet, its health and its behaviour.
Dr. Tony Sarma is our resident vet. He holds the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeon’s Certificate in Small Animal Surgery and is a man of strong opinions … you have been warned!
And of course, me - Ali Ghobadi. Animal lover and firm believer that work should be fun!

Enjoy the rest of the Petspertise® blog.

Ali
Founder & Petspert

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Posted in Ali | 1 Comment »

Roger Mugford’s Introduction to the Social Side of Dogs

Posted by Roger Mugford - The Mindspert on the 14th July 2009

Roger with PC

Rather than go on about me, I thought I’d tell you more about what I know and love – dogs and what makes them tick!

We all know that dogs are pack animals, meaning that they live for the group or the proverbial “one for all, all for one”.  That very sociability has made it easier for the wolf’s early domesticators to transfer inherent loyalty between wolves to a loyalty towards man.  We adore the outcome of that long ago domestication with a passion given to no other domesticated species of animal.

I have been in practice as an animal psychologist for 30 years and the great majority of the 55,000 cases I have treated over this period were of misdirected or inadequate social behaviours.  Top of the list amongst pathological social behaviours is aggression towards other dogs.  Then there are dogs that bite people, be they strangers or members of the family.  If we explore the context in which these undesired or inappropriate social behaviours occur, some general principals on problem prevention become apparent.  That is what I will do over the course of my next 2 blog posts.

Socialisation

You may have heard of the experiments by Scott and Fuller in the 1950s.  They developed the concept of critical periods of socialisation, implying that there are distinct developmental phases that puppies go through.  Failure to form optimum social relationships before the age of say, 16 weeks are said to lead to a permanently damaged or socially incompetent adult dog. Missing out on the touchy-feely social exposures by a puppy will predispose it to become socially incompetent.

Fortunately, my pragmatic experience, over many years, points to so many exceptions to this deterministic viewpoint that I have to conclude that maybe Scott and Fuller were wrong!  There are not critical periods of socialisation, rather a continuous learning process that begins at birth (maybe even before birth) and runs into maturity or even old age. Practically speaking, rehabilitation of essentially feral dogs, bought in from the mountains of Afghanistan and where there was little contact with humans still allows these rescued domestic dogs to form trusting bonds with people.  The good news about this view is that dogs that are seemingly shy or antagonistic to people and/or to dogs can, broadly speaking, be rehabilitated.  So how do we go about this at my Animal Behaviour Centre?

You will have to wait until my next blog post for that! Other topics also still to come:

  • Who breeds bad dogs (puppy farms, pedigree breeders and all that)
  • Accessibility; who dreams up dog bans and decides where pets can travel, visit and enjoy
  • Breed specific legislation (myths and mysteries)
  • Dogs that are misunderstood; how changing the shape and colours of dogs affects their social responses.

Roger Mugford BSc PhD

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Posted in Dog behaviour | 1 Comment »

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