Poland 2 day seminar

by

Amber Batson

A Dog’s Life – an introduction to dog behaviour

The first weekend in April saw me winging my way across to Warsaw on behalf of a Polish dog behaviour organisation – Fundacja Psia Wachta .

Organised by Magda Urban (a member of PDTE – Pet Dog Trainers of Europe) the weekend saw more than 70 attendees – mainly from Poland and a few from the Czech Republic, keen to learn more about dog behaviour. 

The two day course looked at evolution and how man has had limited effect on dog behaviour given that the dog’s evolution has taken nearly 70 million years and yet man has only been involved with the dog for about 12, 000 years – that’s less than 0.03% of the dogs time on this planet!!

We reviewed what is normal behaviour for the dog, how dogs learn – both as puppies and from other experiences and we discussed how disease and neutering (or not neutering!) can have an effect on behaviour. Most importantly we considered the concept of anthropomorphism – putting human interpretation and emotion onto an animal’s behaviour and how this, along with various aspects of the domestic dogs development, can affect the way they behave around us. 

A good look at what dogs seem to want in life (in scientific terms we call this the inelastic aspects of their ethogram!) led us to have an interactive session on how to improve a dog’s living conditions so that we meet their behavioural needs as well as just the physical aspects like nutrition or exercise.

Feed back (from what I could tell as my Polish is somewhat limited!) seemed very positive and I have been invited back in the Autumn.  I had a great weekend and met some wonderful people so I am thoroughly looking forward to a return trip soon!