Dogs are experts at human body language, but communication is a two-way street. Since you’re reading this article, you have probably gone to great lengths to understand their nonverbal communication, but how well you understand your own body language?
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Environmental enrichment (EE) is a technique designed to enhance the quality of life of captive and domestic animals, by providing environmental stimuli to promote psychological and physiological well-being….
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Service dogs are working more and more with students. Those present in schools, colleges, camps, and other similar environments often struggle to understand the laws defining service dogs, what to expect from trained service dogs, and how to embrace them.
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Puppies are born blind and deaf, and stay this way until approximately 14 days of age, so their lives depend on finding the mother’s nipple through smell. This early stimulation of olfactory organs allows them to reach adulthood with the ability to smell the equivalent of a tablespoon of coffee in 2 Olympic pools of water.
In the mid-17thcentury, monks in a hospice located in the Great Saint Bernard Pass, in the Italian Alps, used dogs in the rescue of lost mountaineers amidst snow and fog. Since then, humans have used dogs’olfactory skills in a variety of activities, from searching for people, drugs, explosives, and endangered animal species for their conservation, to the detection of significant changes in our cells, alerting us to illnesses such as type 1 diabetes or cancer.
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I close my book, place it on the bedside table, and turn off the light, the signal for Sam, my yellow Lab, to jump up on the bed for one last goodnight snuggle.
My room is dark: I no longer have to sleep with the light on and under the covers. I no longer see dark human shadows traipsing past my window during sleep hours. My room is quiet: I no longer have to doze off with the radio softly playing background sounds. I can sleep longer and sleep more soundly: sometimes, even all night long! I wake up more refreshed in the morning. Not perfectly refreshed, but more so.
Yes, I still have nightmares. But after ten years, fewer of them, thanks to Sam.
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