The Bitey End of the Dog

Your dog can be loved, well-fed, and perfectly “trained” and still be living a life that doesn’t feel good to them. That’s the uncomfortable heart of animal welfare, and it’s why I sat down with Kim Brophey and veterinary behaviorist Dr. Carlo Siracusa for a wide-ranging, nuanced conversation about what quality of life really means for dogs. For the season finale of The Bitey End of the Dog, we dig into a definition of animal welfare that’s easy to say but hard to live by: the dog’s quality ...

You can’t “test” your way to certainty about whether a dog will bite—and provoking a dog during an assessment may tell us very little about the risk that dog presents in the real world. In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Helen Howell, a forensic behaviorist and expert witness who works on serious injury and fatality cases. We talk about what a modern dog bite risk assessment should look like when the goal is not only to assess risk, but also to identify practical ways to reduce it. Helen brin...

Touching animals sounds simple enough. But what happens when you need to trim a nail, clean an ear, draw blood, remove a painful mat, or help a frightened animal through urgent medical care? In this episode, I’m joined by Tabitha Kucera, an Elite Fear Free and Low Stress Handling Certified Registered Veterinary Technician and Veterinary Technician Specialist in Behavior. We take a practical and honest look at what humane handling means when an animal needs care but may not want to be touched....

The dog training world has always had disagreements about methods and approaches. But in recent years, the divide between force-free and balanced training has grown into something much bigger. Conversations have become increasingly polarized, curiosity is often replaced by conflict, and simply trying to understand another perspective can sometimes put you at odds with your own community. In this episode, I sit down with Carmeleta Aufderheide, a dog trainer with a master’s degree in conflict a...

A dog can be “aggressive” on the outside while living a totally different emotional story on the inside, and that mismatch is where so many training plans break. We sit down with Karin Pienaar, author of Mood Matters, to talk about what behavior is really made of: mood, emotions, arousal, and the dog’s lived experience day to day. We get concrete about definitions first, then go deeper into why mood is the starting point for everything we ask dogs to do. Karin explains the difference between...