The Pawsitive Post in Conversation by Companion Animal Psychology

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How can we set and maintain standards for dog training and animal behaviour? Zazie and Kristi are joined by Fiona Cooke, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Animal Behaviour and Training Council to learn all about their important work in the UK, and what anyone can do if they want to make a difference.
We talked about:
What the ABTC does
Why it's so important to follow a compassionate, non-punitive approach in training and animal behaviour
The wide range of organizations who are part of the ABTC (and how they represent people who work with dogs, cats, horses, and exotics)
The benefits of being on the ABTC register for practitioners in the UK, and how the public can use it to find a good trainer or behaviourist
We get a sneak peek of what the ABTC is working on right now
The importance of collaboration and how people can increase awareness of the ABTC and support their work
We get Fiona's tips on what people can do to make a difference
And finally we find out what Fiona's been reading, which turns out to include an instruction booklet for building a wardrobe!

The books Fiona recommends are The Secret Hour by Mick Herron and also his Slough House series, of which the first is Slow Horses.
The Animal Behaviour and Training Council sets and maintains standards of knowledge and practical skills needed to be an animal trainer, training instructor or animal behaviour therapist and maintains the national Register of appropriately assessed practitioners.
ABTC members include major animal welfare charities, organisations concerned with human-animal interactions, educational institutions and membership organisations for practitioners. The Council represents the training and behaviour sector to the public and to governments.
Visit the ABTC website: https://abtc.org.uk/
Sponsor the ABTC: https://abtc.org.uk/sponsors/
ABTC merch: https://shop.abtc.org.uk/
Fiona Cooke is Chair of the ABTC Board of Trustees. She is Head of Specialist Services (vet, behaviour, training and research) at Woodgreen Pets Charity. Her PhD focused on the role of local government in the implementation and enforcement of animal welfare legislation. She is a lecturer in law and runs an animal behaviour company working with complex behavioural issues of dogs and cats. Fiona is a full member of the APBC and FABC as well as an ABTC registered CAB.
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About the co-hosts:
Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.
Kristi Benson's website  Facebook  

Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and has a column at Psychology Today. She lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, a dog and a cat. 
Instagram  BlueSky

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Zazie and Kristi chat with scientist Dr. Catherine Reeve about her research to find out whether dogs change their behaviour when their owner is pregnant and if they can use their noses to detect when someone is stressed.
We talked about:
The survey that investigated whether women think their dog's behaviour changed when they were pregnant
The kinds of dogs that were most likely to show changes
How the scientists got scent samples from people who were stressed
The training to teach dogs to alert to the scent
How well the dogs did at the task
The implications for ordinary dog guardians
The papers we talked about are:
Dog owners’ perceptions of their dog’s behaviour during pregnancy https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08927936.2025.2502241
Dogs can discriminate between human baseline and psychological stress condition odours https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274143
The books Catherine recommended are The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry and The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica.
Also mentioned: Earlier episodes on surveys and understanding research (Ep61), and on dogs and scent work (Ep56 with Melissa McCue-McGrath; Ep 46 with Bonnie Hartney; Ep35 with Kim Cooper and Cat Warren).
Dr. Catherine Reeve is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Mount Saint Vincent University. She has a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Dalhousie University. She’s interested in applied canine behaviour, canine cognition, especially olfaction, and human-animal interaction. And she’s the head trainer at Epic Tails Canine Adventures in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
University website: https://www.msvu.ca/academics/bachelor-of-science-bsc/psychology/faculty-and-staff/dr-catherine-reeve/
Epic Tails Canine Adventures: https://epic-tails.ca/
Support the show
About the co-hosts:
Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.
Kristi Benson's website  Facebook  

Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and has a column at Psychology Today. She lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, a dog and a cat. 
Instagram  BlueSky

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New research on dogs and cats helps us to understand them better and give them better lives. But how do we know if the research is any good, and what about our feelings about the results? Zazie and Kristi chat about how to evaluate the science.
We talk about:
Taking an ethical stance on dogs and cats that recognizes that they are sentient beings
How it can be tricky to assess research if you're not trained as a scientist
The research on training methods shows risks to using aversives and that it's much better to only use reward-based training methods
Why we look for more than one study to teach us something
We consider different types of research, including the value of questionnaire studies and of experiments
What a meta-analysis is
How it can feel emotional if you don't like the results of a particular study
People's willingness to take part in research
A re-evaluation of a classic study on spanking children that is relevant to the discussion
And finally we talk about the books we're reading

The books we recommend this time are:
People, Places, Things by Chuck Palahniuk
New Beginnings at the Cosy Cat Cafe by Julie Haworth

Also mentioned is Zazie's post about a literature review on dog training methods: https://www.companionanimalpsychology.com/2017/04/new-literature-review-recommends-reward.html
Support the show
About the co-hosts:
Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.
Kristi Benson's website  Facebook  

Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and has a column at Psychology Today. She lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, a dog and a cat. 
Instagram  BlueSky

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Jean Donaldson has just published a new edition of her book Mine! A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs. If you have a dog who guards food, objects, people, or locations, you need this book! Jean joins Zazie and Kristi to discuss what to do if your dog guards food, locations, or other resources.
We talk about:
Why it was time for a new edition of Mine! and what it was like to write it
How to decide if your dog needs a regular training plan or a more incremental one to resolve their guarding behaviour
Why it's a myth that you should be able to take your dog's food away from them
How we can add food to puppies' bowls to help prevent food guarding
Why there's not really anything wrong with the personality of a dog who guards resources
The other behaviour issues that sometimes accompany guarding behaviour
What it means to be "warmed up" or "cold" in a dog training plan
Why dog trainers like the spicy dogs
The Olde English Sheepdog who was a bit of a challenge
Guarding behaviour in Jean's dog Buffy and Kristi's dogs Archer and Soleil
When to hire a dog trainer to help with resource guarding
The book Jean recommended to us is The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV by Helen Kastor.
To be the first to learn about Bark! Fest, the book festival for animal lovers, sign up to the Companion Animal Psychology newsletter.
Mine! A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs by Jean Donaldson is available wherever books are sold.
Jean Donaldson is one of the world's top dog trainers, founder of the Academy for Dog Trainers, and author of the seminal book Culture Clash, which was named number one training and behaviour book by The Association of Pet Dog Trainers. In 2017, Jean authored and instructed Dog Training 101 for The Great Courses, another wonderful resource for dog guardians. Her most recent book is the second edition of Mine! A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs.
Follow Jean at the Academy for Dog Trainers:
Website: https://academyfordogtrainers.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AcademyforDogTrainers
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/academy4dogtrainers/?hl=en
You might also like: Understanding resource guarding in dogs and how to fix it with Lisa Skavienski 
Support the show
About the co-hosts:
Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.
Kristi Benson's website  Facebook  

Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and has a column at Psychology Today. She lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, a dog and a cat. 
Instagram  BlueSky

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Kids are routinely taught to ask a dog's owner before petting the dog. Today, radio host Steve Dale joins us to talk about how they should also find out if the dog wants to be petted or not. We learn about Steve's new children's book, Ask the Dog, which is a fun story with an important message, and we also talk about some good news in cat health.
We talked about:
Why Steve wrote the book
The importance of preventing dog bites, and why children are especially at risk
Why children should learn to ask the dog
How the relationship between dogs and children has changed over the years
What it was like working with an illustrator for the book
The work of the EveryCat Health Foundation and their research on taurine in cat food, FIP, diabetes, and heart disease
How research on cat health has also benefited human health
Also mentioned:
The EveryCat Health Foundation is at everycat.org
Theater of the Mind created by David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar is at the Goodman Theater in Chicago through August 30 2026 https://theaterofthemindchicago.com/
Steve Dale's interview with David Byrne https://stevedalepetworld.com/blog/conversation-with-david-byrne-booth-46/
The book Steve recommended is Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
Ask the Dog by Steve Dale, illustrated by Shelby Koehler, is available wherever books are sold.
Steve Dale is a certified animal behavior consultant, a radio host, and his show Steve Dale’s Pet World is essential listening for everyone who loves pets. He co-edited Decoding Your Dog, written by the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, and has written and contributed to many other books. Ask the Dog is his first children's book. Steve is the host of Steve Dale's Pet World on WGN radio and also hosts a Sunday afternoon talk show at WGN radio. 
Learn more about Steve and sign up for his newsletter at stevedale.tv.
Support the show
About the co-hosts:
Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.
Kristi Benson's website  Facebook  

Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and has a column at Psychology Today. She lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, a dog and a cat. 
Instagram  BlueSky