Author: Karolina Westlund, PhD

The five Ps: the advantages of considering emotions

Post author By Karolina Westlund, PhD
Post date 22 March, 2016
43 Comments on The five Ps: the advantages of considering emotions

revised February 2025.

Is the dog depicted above crouching, or fearful?

Yes, I know, it’s nigh impossible to guess which emotional state an animal is in from a still picture. We need motion, and context, to be able to do that.

I guess what I’m really asking is: do you look at animals and see predominantly their behaviour, or do you take a stab at considering their emotional/mood state?

In this blog post, I hope to convince you to develop the second perspective, if you haven’t already.

In other words, I would encourage you to start using emotion labels – one of the three types of useful labels when it comes to animals and their behaviour.

The world of animal trainers is divided, and I find that some trainers avoid the subject of animal emotions altogether.

“There’s no need to factor in and understand emotions, just deal with the observable behaviour”, is the gist of what some trainers and animal professionals say.

Why dog training programs on TV should be entertaining, educational – and ethical

Post author By Karolina Westlund, PhD
Post date 12 March, 2016
19 Comments on Why dog training programs on TV should be entertaining, educational – and ethical

Suppose you were a TV producer charged with launching a new dog training show on your network. Or in this day and age, your medium might not be television but any kind of video streaming service.

How would you go about doing that?

Which criteria would be important in outlining the show?

Some may say: you need to find a charismatic trainer, to serve as host.

TV dog show hosts need to be charismatic.

True.

That’s not all, though. I wouldn’t even start there.

Animal Emotions Ethics

Why you should behave as if animals have feelings even if you don’t believe that they do.

Post author By Karolina Westlund, PhD
Post date 10 March, 2016
12 Comments on Why you should behave as if animals have feelings even if you don’t believe that they do.

Do animals have emotions: can they experience the same subjective feelings of fear, rage and joy that humans can?

A seemingly straightforward question, and one that I recently asked on Facebook.

Here’s what you answered, Facebookers:

Problem Solving

Resolving destructive behaviour in your pet

Post author By Karolina Westlund, PhD
Post date 25 February, 2016
11 Comments on Resolving destructive behaviour in your pet

Revised August 2022.

destructive animals — Destructive behaviour can be extremely frustrating. Image: concept by ILLIS ABC, drawing by Pyrrth

Destructive behaviour from your beloved pet can be a nuisance. Assuming there’s not an underlying medical condition or the behaviour isn’t anxiety-related, let’s look at some ways of addressing these types of behaviour, regardless of whether you’re a dog dude, a cat gal or a parrot person.

Ethics Weathering scepticism

On the danger of dog collars.

Post author By Karolina Westlund, PhD
Post date 18 February, 2016
38 Comments on On the danger of dog collars.

There’s a debate raging in Sweden about whether choke collars are potentially dangerous to dogs.

choke chain — Pros and cons of choke collars? Photo: Elf, Wikipedia

Several influential dog coaches on TV use and recommend them, other experienced dog professionals argue against them. It’s currently causing all kinds of shock waves to ripple across social media, which inspired me for a blog post.

Animal Training How we learn

How to become a better animal trainer.

Post author By Karolina Westlund, PhD
Post date 14 February, 2016
18 Comments on How to become a better animal trainer.

It took me years to realize this, but there are some approaches that really propelled my learning about animal behaviour management in general, and animal training specifically.

Here are the four tactics or concepts that I’ve found most useful: