Tag: cat training

Your Pet is Not Like Your Car

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

A few months ago my car was intermittently making a strange noise. I had to take it in for an oil change anyway so I set up an appointment for a couple weeks from then. The morning of the appointment my husband reminded me to tell them about the noise (which I hadn’t heard since I scheduled with the mechanic). I responded, “With my luck, it won’t make any noise and they won’t be able to figure out what’s wrong with it.” I then told him a story about a similar incident where I intermittently smelled something akin to burning rubber when I drove but when I took it in, the mechanic couldn’t smell it and wasn’t able to diagnose the issue. 

And then it hit me. This is why people want to show me their dog’s undesirable behavior. I hear on an almost daily basis statements like:

I want you to come to my house to see the behavior. 

I hope we see dogs on our walk so you can see what he does. 

I’m worried she’s going to act perfectly when you’re here. 

Let me show you what he does.

All of these boil down to the desire that people have for me to see their pet doing the behavior that they want to change. And, on an almost daily basis, I respond with:

I don’t need to see your pet’s behavior in order for us to work on it. Actually, we’re going to manage the situation so that we hopefully don’t see it! 

That statement is usually met with skepticism and a look that says, “What do you mean you don’t want to see the behavior?” And while I’ve always understood that it’s a foreign concept for most in our society to address behavior issues before they happen instead of relying on consequences, I didn’t understand why it was truly so difficult to overcome the desire for me to see the behavior. That is, I didn’t understand until I said the exact same thing about my car. 

It dawned on me at that moment that there are issues that truly can’t be diagnosed without the problem happening in front of the expert. An optometrist needs to administer a vision test. The IT person asks to remote into the computer to poke around. The mechanic says that they can’t diagnose an intermittent smell because everything else looks okay. Most of us have a long learning history that reinforces this thought process that the expert needs to see the problem in order to develop the solution. We also have a learning history that says that when an expert doesn’t see the problem, we’re stuck with it. 

So why doesn’t your behavior professional need to see the behavior in order to modify it? Here are 5 reasons for us at Pet Harmony:

  1. We’ve seen it before, and we believe you. Because we have spent years studying the behavior sciences and their practical application, we understand the underlying causes of various behavior issues without needing to see them happening. We’ve worked with thousands of animals with maladaptive behavior over many years and assign our consultants based on what they’ve experienced and worked with. We know what questions to ask in order to develop a behavior modification plan for individual pets and can “see” the behavior in our heads. Only once in a blue moon do we get asked about something that none of us have seen before. In those cases we’ll often ask our clients to video the behavior, if it’s safe to do so, and/or refer them to a Veterinary Behaviorist. 
  2. Safety. We work primarily with aggression, reactivity, anxiety, and fear. In order to keep you, your pet, the public, and ourselves safe, we need to manage the environment so the animal can’t perform unsafe behaviors. If the pet’s problem is biting people then we definitely don’t want to see that!
  3. Mitigating stress levels. Once your pet passes a certain point, their brain is not receptive to learning. This is why people tell us that nothing works when their dog is reacting or they’ve tried using food in training and it didn’t work. If we want to start teaching the animal different exercises in our session then we need to keep them calm enough that they will be capable of learning. 
  4. Practice makes perfect. The more an animal (ourselves included) practices a behavior, the better they get at performing it. If our goal is to decrease the unwanted behavior, we don’t want them to continue practicing and perfecting it. This is why management (arranging the environment so the animal doesn’t perform the unwanted behavior) is so critical to behavior modification. 
  5. We can change unwanted behavior before it happens. There are several options to changing behavior and many of them can be implemented before the animal does the undesirable action! For example: if you don’t want your dog jumping on you, you don’t have to wait for him to jump on you to start training; you can train before he jumps and save yourself the frustration. 

Now what?

  • Take a few minutes to let this concept soak in: we don’t need to see your pet behaving badly to change their behavior. How do you feel about that? Relief? Skepticism? Email us at info@petharmonytraining.com if you’re still unsure! 
  • Consider the plethora of service options that open up knowing that we can help without being there in person. Is there actually a service that makes more sense for you than in-home sessions?
  • Are you struggling with other dog behavior problems? Learn about behavior modification and how you can get relief here.

Happy training!

Allie

December 2019 Training Challenge: Focus on Completing Your Yearly Goals

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

It’s time for our last training challenge of 2019! Your December challenge is:

Last chance for 2019 goals

For those of you who’ve participated in our training challenges from the very beginning (before this blog existed!) you know that our January challenge was to create 1-3 2019 goals for your pet. With the end of the year rapidly approaching it’s now or never to complete those this year! If you joined us later in the year (welcome!) then your challenge is to come up with just one goal for this month and complete it. 

Here’s how Oso and I are doing on our goals:

Our 2019 training goals

As you can see, there are some things that we did well and some things that we didn’t do well. He’s done awesome with his vet visits this year but I definitely did not do one happy vet visit each month. Something we can aspire to next year! I still have time to finish his Western Hold Up trick so you know what we’ll be working on this month. 

If you’re like me and you know there’s a goal that you definitely won’t complete this year, here’s what I recommend doing with it:

  • Reevaluate how important it is. Do you want to try it for next year or scrap it altogether? There’s no shame in scrapping! 
  • Identify your barriers to performing that goal: the real reasons, not excuses. I could easily say that we moved this year and that’s why I didn’t do one happy vet visit per month, but the real reason is that it makes me anxious to take him because of his past behavioral history from years ago. Even though he’s made leaps and bounds of progress since we adopted him I need to work on that more for me, not him, and my comfort level. After that I can return to our happy vet visit goal.  
  • Think about your process instead of your goal. I’m currently reading a (so far) great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear(this is an affiliate link). One of the big points it makes is that if we focus on a process, like “train 5 minutes per day”, instead of a goal like “have a better trained dog” that we’ll be more successful. For those of you who participated in our October “Train 5 Minutes Every Day” challenge you know how true that is! 

Now what?

  • Get training and have fun! Don’t sweat it if you don’t finish everything on your list. There’s always next year!

Happy training!

Allie

November 2019 Training Challenge: Teach Your Pet to Army Crawl

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

Since last month’s challenge was more involved (awesome job to everyone who participated!), I figured we should take it easy on you for November. So this month’s training challenge involves trick training:

Teach your pet to army crawl

Professional army crawler! GIF by Nebraska Humane Society.

There are a few different ways to teach this but I prefer to start out luring since it’s typically the easiest. Check out our Facebook Live video for a visual demo on how to teach an army crawl. Below are the steps:

  1. Ask your pet to lie down on a soft surface (it’ll be difficult on slippery surfaces). Put a treat in your fist and place your fist on the ground between your pet’s paws. They’re likely now smelling the treat!
  2. Slowly move your fist forward along the ground. Pretend there’s a magnet in both your fist and your pet’s nose: the two should stay connected. You can only accomplish that connection by moving slowly. 
  3. Frequently mark and treat your pet for following the treat. For many pets that means treating the stretch forward first, then working your way up to treating for one foot forward, then two feet forward, etc. 
  4. Lure your pet (steps 1-3) 5 times. If they do well at least 4 out of 5 times move to the next step. 
  5. Without a treat in your hand, move your hand along the ground as you did before. If your pet follows, great! Mark and treat then repeat this step 4 more times. If your pet does not follow, go back to step 4. 
  6. Congratulations! You’ve finished the fluency stage with a pronounced hand signal. You can either stop here, change the hand signal, add a verbal cue, or proof the behavior. That’s up to you! 

Now what?

  • Have fun training! The great thing about trick training is that there’s no pressure; it’s not a big deal if your pet doesn’t learn this particular trick. Just have fun with it!
  • Post your pet doing an army crawl on our Facebook page! We love to see videos of your pets doing fun stuff. 
  • Need help troubleshooting? Email us at info@petharmonytraining.com to set up a quick phone consult. These are just $1/minute.

Happy training!

Allie 

5 Tips for Your Pet’s Best Halloween

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

My favorite holiday, Halloween, is almost here! But while this holiday is often a favorite for humans it’s rarely a favorite for pets and that makes it stressful for their owners. The doorbell ringing all night often sends our pets into a loud tailspin. It’s a battle to get to the door when pets are crowding it. And let’s not forget the pets who get into the bowl of Halloween candy when no one is looking.

Let’s make this year different by following these 5 simple tips:

  1. Put your pets away. There’s no reason your pet absolutely needs to greet trick-or-treaters or attend your Halloween party (unless contraindicated for separation anxiety). If you’re worried about your pet running out the open door or how they’ll act around people in costumes then let them hang out in another room for the evening. Many will thank you for leaving them out of the commotion! 
  2. Drown out the doorbell. Some people go as far as to disconnect their doorbell or simply turn off their porch light and leave a bowl of candy out, but if you’d like to participate in trick-or-treating then leave the TV or music on for your pet so they can’t hear the doorbell.
  3. Update your pet’s ID tags and microchip info. Better safe than sorry! 
  4. Put candy bowls out of your pet’s reach. Pets are opportunistic and just because something is toxic to them doesn’t mean they won’t ingest it (like humans and alcohol). This might mean setting the bowl not right near the front door to keep it out of reach.
  5. Create an airlock around the door. Set up a freestanding gate around your front door to create an airlock that you can get in but your pet can’t. You can find some of our favorites on our Amazon storefront! (Disclosure: We receive a small commission for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. This helps us continue to put out free content to help you and your pets live more harmoniously!)

Happy Halloween!

Allie

A scruffy white and dark grey dog standing in front of a tree with yellow fall foliage. There is a deflated jackolantern next to him.
You don't have to feel as deflated as Petey's jack-o-lantern this Halloween!

Now What?

Want some more ideas for helping your pets during the chaos of holidays? Here are a few posts from our team:

If you want more enrichment and training tips delivered directly to your inbox, join our email list! Keep up with the blog, podcast, and events too. 

Copyright 2025 Pet Harmony, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy

Results are not guaranteed because behavior, human, canine, or otherwise, are not guaranteeable.

Becoming Bilingual: Reading Your Pet’s Body Language

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

 

 

What if I told you that there’s a way to make your pet’s behavior more predictable? A way to better avoid unfortunate incidents? A way to communicate better with your non-human family members? There is! 

All of this becomes possible when we can proficiently read our pet’s body language. Our pets are communicating with us all of the time through their body language signals and behavior. I’d say that most of us can pick up on big emotional “tones” with our animals. For instance, most people would probably say the dog on the left is “happy” and the dog on the right is “not happy” without knowing the nuts and bolts of dog body language. 

Photo by Kuma Kum on Unsplash Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

 

Likewise, “happy” cat on the left and “not happy” cat on the right. 

Photo by Ludemeula Fernandes on Unsplash  

 

However, if we just leave our understanding at this most basic level we’re missing most of the conversation. It’d be like only learning the tone of voice someone uses instead of learning words and sentences. Their raised voice might be anger or excitement; it can be hard to tell if we don’t know the words. Further study is needed to learn the nuances and subtle differences in communication, like the difference between these two dogs:

Photo by Anne Dudek on Unsplash Photo by Sakura on Unsplash

 

How can I learn my pet’s body language? 

There are three basic skills to being able to proficiently read your pet’s body language:

  1. Observation: being able to see the signals your pet is displaying
  2. Knowing the signals: knowing the “words” your pet is using
  3. Interpretation: understanding how they’re stringing the “words” into “sentences”

Observation is the first step; it doesn’t matter if you know the signals if you can’t see your pet using them! While there are a lot of jokes about observant vs. unobservant people, this too is a skill that can be learned like any other! Here are some tips for beefing up your observation skills:

  1. Play games! Activities like scavenger hunts, find the difference photos, and even Eye Spy games are great for sharpening your observational skills.
  2. Observe with all 5 senses. There’s an anxiety-reducing exercise that is great for building observational skills as well: acknowledge 5 things you see, 4 things you touch, 3 things you hear, 2 things you smell, and 1 thing you taste. This will come in handy when we get to the interpretation section. 
  3. Separate observation from interpretation by watching animals you know nothing about. So often we immediately jump to interpretation instead of simply observing what’s going on and taking it at face value. I find it’s easier for my students to do this when they practice watching videos of an animal they’re not familiar with first. 

After or alongside building observational skills we can start learning the body language signals. As with anything, there are some great resources and some inaccurate resources on the internet. Here are a few we recommend (check out our recommendations pages as well; we update frequently!):

This is by no means an exhaustive list and there are many species missing; email us at info@petharmonytraining.com if you’re looking for resources on a different species! Here are some tips to help you observe your pet’s signals:

  • Focus on one body part at a time. For an entire day solely focus on your pet’s ears and nothing else. The next day focus on your pet’s mouth, and so on. Become proficient reading one part then move on to the next. 
  • Video your pet. Watch and rewatch the video focusing on different body parts and signals. How many do you see when playing it frame by frame vs. at normal speed?
  • Practice! Learning another language takes time and practice, plain and simple. The only way to see more signals is to practice frequently. 

Interpreting body language signals is not always black and white. A yawn may be a stress signal one minute and related to sleep in another minute. This is where interpretation comes in. We must always remember, though, that our interpretation is just that. It’s not a 100% accurate fact. It’s our best guess as to what the animal is experiencing and we will not really be able to confirm our assumptions with our pets. As such, it’s important that we always make training and behavior modification decisions based on observable behaviors instead of our interpretations.

This step is the hardest because we can’t verify our answer to see if it’s right. This might be a step that you prefer to leave to a professional (which is a great call!) Here are some tips to help you become more proficient at interpreting your pet’s signals if you’d like to do so:

  • Stick to simple interpretations like comfortable vs. uncomfortable. The more involved your interpretation the more likely it is to be incorrect. 
  • Observe your pet’s entire body. Is their body language overall comfortable or uncomfortable? Are you seeing multiple stress signals in a row and/or simultaneously?
  • Watch for the cause and effect in your videos. What happens before and after your pet displays certain signals? Remember to observe with all of your senses. 
  • Watch videos of animals interacting together. One of the best ways to glean conversations in another language is to listen to native speakers! Again, watch for the cause and effect. 
  • Get a professional’s (or twos or threes) opinion. Professionals have simply watched a whole lot of animals and that helps build a mental database that we can reference against, so to speak. That doesn’t mean we don’t get it wrong too. We just have more experience observing different individuals. 

Now what?

  • Identify which step you should start with: observation, learning the signals, or interpretation. 
  • Build the habit into your day. Devote at least a few minutes each day to becoming fluent in your pet’s language. 
  • Try the above steps and do some research on your own. Get your friends and family involved so you can practice with them, too! 
  • Move on to the next phase when you feel confident in the one you’re currently on. 
  • Check out our Setting Yourself Up for Success: Behavior Modification Basics course for more info on canine body language.
  • Reach out to a professional for help. Pet Harmony routinely offers body language seminars in person and if you ask us nicely at info@petharmonytraining.com we’ll consider a webinar sooner rather than later for y’all 😉 

Happy training!

Allie