Author Archives: Nicholas Dodman

Last week I was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air by Dave Davies (introduced by Terri Gross).  The subject was Tufts new book, good Old Dog, which I contributed to and edited. Right after the show the book took off. It was in the top 100 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites, which means, by Read More

This week I attended a Powderhouse Productions/Animal Planet event to celebrate the premiere of DOGS 101 Season Three at the Liberty Hotel in Boston.  DOGS 101 experts Karen 'Doc' Halligan and Andrea Arden were in attendance and proceeds from the event went to the MSPCA. I must admit, I had no idea what to expect as Read More

Here we are again in the dog days of summer and most everything is well in my little corner of the world.  Many of our students are on break, though being a full service veterinary hospital, Tufts keeps senior students around so they can help man the trenches and, in the process, increase their veterinary Read More

While it is reasonably easy to train dogs as seizure-response dogs to run and get help when someone is having a seizure, to have dogs pick up on an impending seizure before it actually happens is a totally different kettle of fish (and one that is somewhat equivocal).  Though there are groups who train seizure-alert Read More

Toward the end of March, I traveled to Pasadena, California to give a three-day seminar on cat and dog behavior (one day on cats, two days on dogs).  The dog days were better attended than the cat days because, I suppose, there are more dog trainers than cat trainers but either way the event was Read More

Fortunately there’s lots of good news around these days about positive dog training methods.  Note: positive does not equate with permissive; it involves setting limits, having reasonable expectations, paying attention to and helping a dog achieve desired behaviors, rewarding such behaviors and ignoring (or tsk-tsking) unwanted or objectionable behaviors. Yes, the yin-yang approach of reward Read More

A few days ago I was contacted by a reporter from People magazine looking for some input on an unusual story about a curious friendship that had developed between a lion, a tiger and a 1000-pound bear. Apparently, the three animals were confiscated as cubs from “drug barons” during a police raid several years prior Read More

Hello everyone, it’s so nice to have been asked to blog for Victoria’s site. I have watched her show often and thoroughly approve of her training methods.  Positive training is the right way to go and, as you can see on the show, allows you to train a dog to do practically anything without resorting Read More