Every month I go through what’s been published in canine science, looking for studies that might shift how we understand our dogs. August brought something I find exciting: researchers are getting better at looking inside the canine mind. Here are the studies that caught my attention this month. What does your dog’s brain see when…
You’ve read 3 articles learning about distraction, duration, and distance separately. Let’s see how they work together If you’ve read the previous articles in this series, you now understand what distraction does to learning, why duration is harder than it looks, and how distance changes the picture. And if you’ve been training with that framework,…
If you’ve spent any time hiking in the Alps, you already know that “where to sleep” is rarely a simple question. The mountain shelter system is layered, inconsistently named, and, if you’re traveling with a dog – comes with its own set of unwritten rules that nobody bothers to explain clearly. I have spent many…
Every month I go through what’s been published in canine science – looking for studies that might shift how we understand our dogs. Not every month delivers something dramatic. July was one of those months where the findings were quietly significant rather than flashy, let’s dive in. Can your dog’s walk reveal what’s happening in…
Distance is the last of the three Ds – and the most emotionally loaded. The moment you step back from your dog, something activates in their nervous system that has nothing to do with the commands you’ve trained. The dog who’s perfect until you move You’ve been working on stay. It’s solid. Your dog holds…
Dogs’ behavioral problems and their impact on the owners Having a “problem” dog is difficult. But it’s the guilt about it that makes owners unhappy. A recent study has analysed why owners of dogs with behavioural problems often feel anxious or depressed. It turns out that it is not the dog’s behaviour per se that…
Notes from NUManima 2026 — France’s conference on AI and digital health inveterinary medicine, organized by association Vet IN Tech. I went as an outsider of sorts: a biomedical engineer coming from particle accelerators and medical devices, who ended up building a behavioural tracking tool for dogs, sitting in a room of people who’ve spent…
Two publications map the canine gut microbiome Two teams of scientists from the Dog Ageing Project and Waltham Petcare Science Institute (a research facility of Mars Inc.) have recently published extensive characterizationof the canine gut microbiome. Among others, they were able to show that: These findings will allow scientists to develop food better suited to…
A 30-second stay in a position isn’t just a longer 3-second stay. Something different is happening in your dog’s brain and understanding it changes how you’ll train duration. A quick note on the word “stay”: most professional trainers don’t teach stay as a separate command. If a dog sits, the expectation is that they hold…
We spent three days in the Gorges du Verdon with our golden retriever Simba – hiking, paddling into the gorge and testing our dog training skills. If you’re planning a trip to the Verdon region with a dog, here’s what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised us. Getting There: Plan the Drive Carefully The highway…
