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Animal Emotions Ethics Weathering scepticism

Are dogs separated from mom too early?

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In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had influences from two directions that have caused me to consider the age at which dogs are separated from their litter and mom.

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Animal Emotions

The SEEKING system – a fascinating core emotion

This week’s topic takes off from last week’s post on improving animal welfare by integrating two models of emotions, and is all about the SEEKING system.

If you don’t have six minutes, here’s the major take-home message:

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Animal Emotions

Two models of animal emotions: Core Affect Space and Panksepp’s Core Emotions.

Jaak Panksepp has deservedly been getting a lot of attention about his Core Emotions concept. I like to frame it in another model called the Core Affect Space.

Here is why.

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Animal Emotions Ethics

Animal trainers: take animal emotions into consideration!

revised May 2019.

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Is the dog fearful, or crouching? 

Does it matter, when you’re training?

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.

Categories
Animal Emotions Ethics

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?

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

Here’s what you answered, Facebookers:

Categories
Animal Emotions Dealing with fear

4 compelling reasons to feed treats at the vet’s

This post is part of a series on addressing animals’ fear in the veterinary clinic.

Why feed treats? The technical term is counterconditioning (CC), and it’s about feeding fabulous treats in order to reduce fear.

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