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We have been privileged to interview many leaders in veterinary medicine and the pet space. I’m thrilled to share this latest guest interview with Jonathan Lustgarten, MS, PhD, VMD, CSPO, who speaks about the challenges and opportunities of implementing AI in veterinary medicine. As Dr. Lustgarten points out, AI in veterinary medicine is not new; for example, in radiology. But generative AI has created a hyped up conversation about AI in all aspects of life, including veterinary medicine. He is helping to educate veterinarians on what to look for now and what the future holds. I met him at last year’s VMX and was delighted to get an update from him at VMX 2025. This will be the first in a series of interviews with veterinary leaders working to bring responsible AI to veterinary medicine to improve the workflows in the clinic, the well-being of the veterinary healthcare team, and most important of all, the health and healthcare of our beloved pets.
As I noted in my last blog post in 2000, the world was buzzing about the rise of the Internet. Fast-forward 25 years, and the buzz is all about AI. For several years, I have focused on doctoral research on responsible AI. My research has focused on how strategic communicators use AI responsibly, and now I’m turning to organizational use, specifically in veterinary medicine.
What does responsible AI mean in veterinary medicine? What are AI’s benefits to pet owners? There is much to discuss. We’ve started with Dr. Lustgarten’s interview, and I look forward to diving in and reporting back—along with other news in veterinary medicine.
If you are reading this now and going to WVC, I look forward to reflecting on the many memories of the past 25 years of Goodnewsforpets.com coverage, catching up on your news, and, most of all, covering the news of how AI is transforming veterinary medicine. It’s good to be 25!
See you there or see you online!
#goodnewsforpets25
Something sad and difficult is happening with Lewis: clinical sound phobia. He is suffering. Three months from the onset and diagnosis, he is doing much better with the help of medications, but we have a long way to go. I want to share, for others who are going through this or might in the future, what the recent months have been like for us.
Lewis joined my family in December 2021, and in the next few years we had many thunderstorms and at least eight noisy holidays. I live in a capital city, so we get shows with booming fireworks. Lewis didn’t show fear during these events (with one exception under unusual circumstances). He was happy to accept food after noises, though. Due to long experience with sound reactive dogs, I always deliver good snacks for fireworks and thunderclaps. But if Lewis built up some good associations from that, they weren’t enough.
On January 1, 2025, when the New Year’s fireworks started, Lewis started panting and trembling and seeking comfort. He was in extreme distress. I had no meds for him. We toughed it out with food, when he would take it, and he finally slept, exhausted. I made plans to see the vet.
About a week later, a snowstorm started that lasted a few days, a rarity here. We hadn’t been to the vet yet. Lewis has enjoyed the snow in the past. But at around 7:30 PM the first night, we were out in the yard, and a neighbor close by set off some firecrackers. This video shows the result.
Video shows Lewis standing with his paw raised, trembling, panting, startling to quiet noises, with dilated pupils and extreme tension in his facial muscles.
Lewis not only panicked at the time, but he became afraid to go into the yard, especially at night. During the duration of the snow, he wouldn’t go outside in the evening at all, so sometimes didn’t eliminate for up to 18 hours at a time. And his sound triggers quickly generalized.
I phoned the vet, and we started prescription medications as soon as the streets were clear enough that I could pick them up. I won’t describe the whole meds experience, but many of you know it can take much longer than we wish to get a med or combination that works for a dog. When you get it, it’s priceless, a game changer. But the vet and I are still working on it for Lewis. Writing this in April, he is much, much improved. But he is not his old self.
I also had him checked thoroughly for pain (Lopes Fagundes et al., 2018) by two vets. I’ll keep on top of that. It’s worth noting that he was in the age group where genetic sound phobia typically kicks in, according to Dr. Karen Overall (2013, p. 257).
We kept having bad luck. In February, the city water department excavated the next-door neighbor’s driveway. First, a jackhammer. Then an excavator scraping up pavement and dumping it, booming, into a truck. And of course the truck made backup beeping noises. A new level of trauma unlocked for Lewis. The work started every morning at 8 AM and lasted all day. This went on for four days one week, then two more the next week. Lewis would rarely go outside and was hyper-vigilant when he did so. Indoors got poisoned, too, as he associated the scary noises with being at home. When inside, he’d ask to be taken somewhere by car. He’d stand next to the cabinet where I keep his leash and harness or try to get into the garage when I went out. Or he would simply ask repeatedly to go in another room if doors were closed. I let him, but of course it didn’t help, since there’s no escaping sounds of that amplitude and frequency.
There was a sweet spot around dusk after the workers left and before the still-scary nighttime. Sometimes he’d do his only eliminating for the whole day during that time. Sometimes I had to take him to another neighborhood to get him to go.
Lewis was also terrified the next time we had a thunderstorm, and from then on. In my sound webinars, I talk from an acoustic point of view about the difficulty/impossibility of preventing dogs from hearing thunder. This has been brought home to me anew: how desperate we get, as owners, for something, anything, to block that sound. But in almost all cases, you just can’t. When a thunderclap can shake your house, it’s ludicrous to think that an insulated doghouse, a closet, or even earmuffs can make that sound inaudible. This is why owners of sound phobic and other fearful dogs are so easily exploited by companies that sell products with false promises. When we want to relieve our suffering friends; we will try anything.
I also talk about the problems with satiation when using food for ad hoc counterconditioning. This is a big problem for us. In Arkansas, we have storms that go on for hours. We recently had such a day. We knew it was coming. I had about two cups of chicken ready in bite-sized pieces. The first thunder came at 5:30 PM. I had medicated Lewis ahead of time, but he was still reacting. Not as severely as in the video above, but still upset and frightened. I gave him a piece of chicken for every thunderclap for more than 60 minutes, but after that, I had to slow down. It was just too much food.
If you have studied Pavlovian conditioning, you know that it’s important to establish a 1:1 association between the conditioned stimulus (in this case, thunder) and the unconditioned stimulus (food). The clearer the association, the better the transfer of the response you get to the originally-scary thing. But you can’t do it cleanly with thunder. There are some horrible challenges related to satiation. First, which thunderclaps “count”? You start off treating for each one, as we know we should do. Then you realize that if you continue to do that, and include the quieter ones, you will be feeding nonstop. So you try to make some acoustic threshold in your mind’s ear, and just treat for “the loud ones.” But this breaks the pairing. And is there really some magic line for the dog between scary and “OK, I’m not quite panicking” thunderclaps? Even if there is, how do we find it?
The second problem is the duration itself. I mentioned in my example that the thunder started at 5:30 PM. As of 1:30 AM the next morning, eight hours later, there hadn’t been a period of even 10 minutes when there wasn’t audible thunder. Then we had two more days of thunderstorms.
It could help if I could start to ask for a behavior and give him something to do instead of waiting for inconsistently paired food. After hours and days of storms, I was giving “consolation chicken,” since all hope of a consistent pairing was down the drain. But moving to a behavior will have to happen later; he’s too upset.
I mentioned that Lewis’ triggers generalized fast. A door slam, a twig falling on the roof, a human getting the hiccups (really!), the unexpected clink of some metal pieces in a box, the excavation, cars revving—all scare him badly. There are still few days without triggers. In the video above, you can see how sensitized he is; he twitches at least twice in response to background noises.
Lewis is already a challenge with handling and husbandry. I still trim his nails by giving him frozen peanut butter on a LickiMat and clipping as fast as I can. That’s where we are with nail trims after three years, even though I’ve taught cooperative foot handling to five other dogs. Last fall, Marge Rogers started coaching me on getting him relaxed and being handled. That was coming along nicely until the sound phobia kicked in.
The handling practice is on hiatus since he’s too sensitive for much training. But he also gets upset if I do his nails the old way, whereas before, he didn’t care for the handling but didn’t seem to mind the actual clipping.
A similar thing happened with Clara, even though she was such an easier dog than Lewis. She was relaxing through Dremeling at three years old, but then she got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. She was in pain. I made the mistake of trimming her nails during this period and it was very hard on her. Although she was always cooperative, we never got our relaxed nail trimming back again, for her whole life.
Each dog teaches me new things. I wish, for Lewis’ sake, he didn’t have to be teaching me about this.
Lewis’ condition is like Zani’s in that he is convinced that if he could leave the house (out the front, not the back), he could escape the triggers. I wish it were so! And both have/had a more severe response to their trigger sounds than Summer, who was afraid of thunder, but probably not phobic. Ad hoc counterconditioning helped Summer immensely. After Zani was stabilized on meds, structured desensitization and counterconditioning helped her to an amazing recovery. But her triggers had acoustic aspects that made them much more amenable to successful DS/CC.
Lewis has the toughest situation, with clinical phobia to thunder and fireworks that quickly generalized to many other sudden sounds and even objects associated with them. For instance, because one time some metal pieces settled in a box on the coffee table and made a “clink,” we have to be careful about cardboard boxes now.
Medications (ongoing and situational) and ad hoc counterconditioning have both helped. Lewis also profits from physical and verbal comfort. His first response when a sound scares him is to creep over to me or my partner. He often buries his head between my knees. He has access to places to hide, but isn’t interested. After his initial response, he wants to stay in sight of his humans, but not usually cuddly close. I can tell how upset he is by observing which location he chooses in the den.
I use sound masking to manage the acoustic environment. It can make such a big difference, and especially helped during the neighborhood excavation. Because of that, I figured out a trick for masking that may help some of you. I’ll publish that in a separate post.
Here’s an antidote to all the sad photos. We are still managing to have some fun during this adjustment and recovery period. I will keep you posted.
Lopes Fagundes, A. L., Hewison, L., McPeake, K. J., Zulch, H., & Mills, D. S. (2018). Noise sensitivities in dogs: an exploration of signs in dogs with and without musculoskeletal pain using qualitative content analysis. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5, 17.
Overall, K. (2013). Manual of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Dogs and Cats. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Copyright 2025 Eileen Anderson
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Are you in the process of breeding your dog, or do you already have a pregnant dog at home?
Whatever may be the case, you’ll need all information about the canine gestation period and what to expect. A week-by-week dog pregnancy calendar is an essential tool that will help you stay informed of what is happening in all stages of your dog’s pregnancy.
While having a new litter is super exciting, it’s completely natural to feel a bit anxious about caring for a pregnant dog! Luckily, dogs are very self-sufficient and know how to handle pregnancy and give birth on their own. However, you should know what to expect and be prepared to help in case of an emergency.
The average length of canine pregnancy is 63 days, but depending on the breed, dogs can be pregnant from 58 to 68 days. Compared to people, dogs are pregnant for a very short time, so you need to know in advance what to expect to support a healthy pregnancy.
QUICK TIP: Start preparing early for your newborn puppies. They most definitely can come earlier than expected as was the case with 3 out of 4 of Raven’s litters (the 4th litter was 1 day late). Check out our whelping checklist for supplies you might need for whelping a litter of pups.
Below, you will find a comprehensive guide through all nine weeks of canine pregnancy, from the moment your dog conceives to the actual delivery.
Whether you are trying to get your dog pregnant or you already have a pregnant dog at home, congratulations! Caring about a pregnant dog and raising the puppies are the most exciting things you are going to experience as a pet owner. With the help of a canine gestation calendar, you’ll be able to track your dog’s pregnancy week by week and be prepared for a due date.
Within the first seven days, after the mating has taken place, ovulation and fertilization happen. During this process, the fertilized eggs will travel down from the uterus to get implanted into the uterine wall. Knowing when your dog is ovulating can help you create an accurate canine pregnancy calendar and predict your dog’s due date.
Bear in mind, that ovulation is necessary for successful breeding, but it can be hard to determine whether your dog is ovulating or not. However, you can track your dog’s heat cycle to confirm ovulation.
Most dogs don’t show any signs they are pregnant this early on, but pregnancy will create hormonal changes within your dog’s body. While you won’t notice any physical change, some dogs may experience morning sickness. However, this is fairly rare, and most dogs don’t behave or appear any differently.
At this stage, you should continue to feed the best dog food and exercise, and play with your dog the same as before she became pregnant. Furthermore, there is no need to include any nutritional supplements at this point, unless your vet says otherwise.
During the second week of your dog’s pregnancy, the developing embryos slowly start to grow. At this point, the embryos are still very small and don’t need many calories for normal growth and development. Therefore, you can continue feeding your dog the same as before and don’t have to change her diet in any way.
From this point on, you should measure your dog regularly and keep a close eye on her weight. Your dog’s weight should remain the same or increase by no more than 10 percent until the end of the fifth week of pregnancy. However, if your dog starts to lose weight, the puppies may be in danger, so call your vet right away and take your dog for a checkup.
These are still the early days of the pregnancy, so you can continue exercising and playing with your dog as you did before. Furthermore, you don’t have to make any changes to your dog’s grooming and bathing routine just yet. There is also no need to add any nutritional supplements at this point if none were prescribed by your vet.
During the third week of your dog’s pregnancy, the embryos will start to take root inside the lining of the uterus. Inside this protective membrane, they will receive all the nutrients necessary for proper growth and development. At this stage, the puppies are less than one centimeter long, so you won’t notice any significant change in your dog’s overall appearance.
You should continue to feed and exercise your dog as before, and you still don’t have to change any aspects of your dog’s regular routine. However, some dogs start to have a bigger appetite around this time, so monitor your dog for an increase.
If your dog seems more ravenous than before, you can increase her portion sizes a bit, to satisfy the needs of the growing puppies. Note, that it’s too early to make any major changes in your dog’s diet at this point. So, if your dog seems hungrier than usual, a slight increase in food won’t hurt, but don’t exaggerate.
The fourth week of the dog gestation calendar is the time when things really start to happen! At this time, an experienced breeder or a vet will be able to confirm the pregnancy by gently palpating your dog’s abdomen. Please leave this up to experts as you could injure your unborn puppies if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Furthermore, your vet will also be able to do an ultrasound, so you can get a rough idea of how many puppies your dog will have.
Therefore, you should take your dog to the vet by the middle of the fourth week, even if she looks completely healthy. Besides checking the mom and telling you what to expect in terms of litter size, your vet will also be able to spot any developmental deformities in the puppies.
By the end of the fourth week, the puppies will grow to around one and a half centimeters long. Their faces will start to take shape, and they will also start to develop eyes and a spine. And since the fourth week is one of the most formative stages of the pregnancy, the puppies are at the highest risk of sustaining developmental abnormalities.
At this stage of your dog’s pregnancy, you should start to limit rough play and strenuous activities that can put puppies at risk. While you shouldn’t stop exercising your dog altogether, you will have to be extra careful. So instead of taking your dog for a morning run, opt for a long walk and avoid high-intensity exercises.
Now is also the time to talk with the vet about your dog’s changing dietary needs. Your vet may suggest supplements that will support your dog’s delicate state and recommend different foods.
By the fifth week, embryogenesis—the first stage of gestation—ends and the second one begins. At this time, puppies start to form organs and gain weight quickly, and are from now on called fetuses. The good news is that, from this point on, the puppies are less prone to sustaining any developmental issues.
During this week, puppies start to develop individual toes and their claws and whiskers also start to grow. They will also develop their male and female organs, so your vet will be able to tell you the genders of the puppies with an ultrasound.
At this stage of the pregnancy, the puppies will start to put on weight more quickly, so your dog will start to gain weight considerably as well. Consequently, you will need to start feeding your dog more and adjust her diet accordingly. Instead of two main meals, start feeding several smaller meals to your dog.
Depending on your dog’s current diet, now might be the time to change her food to one specially formulated for pregnant dogs. If you have any doubts or questions regarding your dog’s food, consult your vet. Your vet will be able to tell you how much food she needs at this stage of pregnancy and might even recommend the best food for pregnant dogs.
During the sixth week of your dog’s pregnancy, the growth and development of the puppies start to speed up. At this point, the puppies will get their distinctive features and their bones and skeleton start to become solid.
This is the time when your dog’s belly will become larger and her pregnancy will become apparent to everyone. If you haven’t changed her diet till this stage, you will have to do it now. Start feeding your dog with high-quality dog food formulated for pregnant dogs, to avoid nutrition and calorie deficiency.
Some dogs have a decreased appetite during this stage, due to the discomfort caused by the pregnancy. However, your dog will need a lot of calories from the food to support the still-growing puppies. If your dog experiences a decrease in appetite, start feeding several smaller meals or leave food and encourage free feeding.
At this time, you should also consult your vet and see if your dog’s diet should be supplemented in any way.
Seven weeks into the pregnancy, the puppies will start to develop hair and their bones will solidify even more. At this point, your dog may start to shed hair from her belly as she is getting ready for the big day. If this happens, don’t be alarmed—this is normal behavior for dogs as they prepare to give birth.
The seventh week of a dog pregnancy calendar should be marked as the time you start preparing for the birth of your new puppies. This is the best time to set a whelping area for your dog! Choose a quiet place away from foot traffic, where your dog will feel safe and comfortable bringing her new puppies into the world.
Keep in mind, that your dog will be inside her nursery a few weeks after she gives birth, so choose a room you won’t have to use anytime soon. The designated birthing area must be warm and easy to clean. If you don’t plan on breeding your dog often, you can use a simple cardboard box and blankets as a whelping box.
By the eighth week, the puppies’ skeletons should be formed completely. At this time, your vet can do an x-ray to confirm the exact size of the litter. However, this procedure may be too invasive and it’s really up to you and your vet to decide whether it’s necessary or not.
From this point on, your dog can go into labor at any time, so make sure that everything is prepared. Now is your time to make any final adjustments to the whelping area and to see if you have everything you need.
By the end of the eighth week, your dog will begin lactating, which is a clear sign that she’ll go into labor soon. Most dogs start lactating a week before labor, thus giving you a good guess of when the puppies will be born.
To make your dog more comfortable during whelping, you may consider trimming the hair around her nipples and rear quarters. This will keep the mess at a minimum and make the birthing and nursing process a lot easier for your dog.
At this point, your dog might start whelping at any time, so be ready to welcome the new puppies. Your dog will start nesting in her whelping box and might become restless and anxious as she prepares for birth.
You can start measuring your dog’s temperature if she allows it, since a drop of 1.8°F means that the labor will start soon. However, don’t do this if it will stress your dog out or make her uncomfortable in any way.
And once your dog goes into labor, try not to show any signs of stress and just be there to provide comfort and support. Remember, most dogs know what to do and can manage everything on their own. To put your mind at ease, you can notify your vet that your dog started whelping and have him on standby in case your dog needs any help.
Most dogs will have a noticeably larger belly approximately 40 days into the pregnancy. At this point, it will become clear to everyone that the dog is pregnant. From this point onward, a dog’s belly will continue to grow daily until the time of whelping.
We didn’t start seeing obvious pregnancy signs with Raven’s first litter until the final week before delivery.
The average due date of a dog’s pregnancy is 63 days after mating, but this can vary by several days. In most cases, a dog pregnancy lasts between eight to nine weeks. If you know when your dog mated, you can easily calculate her due date and use a dog pregnancy tracker to mark all stages of pregnancy.
A healthy pregnancy in dogs ranges from 58 to 68 days with an average of 63 days. So if everything is as it should be, your dog will give birth to puppies within the first week of the third month. If you want to know your dog’s expected due date, you should record the exact day of the mating and get ready to welcome the new litter.
A dog’s gestation period, on average, lasts for 63 days and is measured from the day the dog ovulates till the day she gives birth. However, depending on the breed, a dog’s pregnancy can last from 58 to 68 days. It’s completely normal for some dogs to give birth a few days earlier than the average 63 days and for others to be a few days late.
Dogs can whelp 54 days into the pregnancy, but this is considered an early delivery. Dogs who carry too many puppies for their size go into early labor, but unfortunately, these puppies rarely survive. On day 54, puppies still don’t have a sucking instinct and rarely survive without adequate veterinary care.
If you suspect that your dog is showing signs of going into labor earlier than the expected due date, call your vet for advice. You should make all the necessary preparations for an early delivery to be on the safe side. And if your dog starts to give birth early or shows signs of distress during delivery, call your vet right away.
Whether your dog is already pregnant or you are planning to breed her, the dog gestation calendar can help you estimate your dog’s due date. A healthy canine pregnancy can last from 58 to 68 days, but the average delivery date is 63 days after mating. The most important stages of a dog’s pregnancy are:
Knowing what happens through all stages of canine pregnancy will help you understand the needs of a pregnant dog and her growing puppies. And with the help of a dog pregnancy tracker, you’ll know exactly what to expect when your dog is expecting!
Have you ever had a pregnant dog?
Did you keep a dog pregnancy calendar to help track your dog’s pregnancy milestones?
Tell us about your experiences in the comment section below.
UPDATE: This post was originally published on July 24th, 2022. We periodically update blog posts with new experiences and information to keep them as relevant as possible.
Check out more of our favorites on our New Puppy Checklist.
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Andrea Davis, Chief Executive Officer Viticus Group
“Our expansion to Nashville marks a significant milestone for both the veterinary and human healthcare industries,” said Andrea Davis, chief executive officer, Viticus Group. “For nearly a century, we’ve been at the forefront of hands-on training and education from our home base in Las Vegas. Now, with this new location, we’re broadening our reach – creating even more opportunities for professionals to advance their skills, build their confidence and shape the future of their practice. We are here to stay with the Vegas lights and look forward to the Nashville sights!”
With its flagship WVC Annual Conference continuing in Las Vegas, Viticus Group remains dedicated to providing unmatched continuing education while building its second home in Nashville. The new facility will be a cutting-edge bioskills training center designed to provide advanced hands-on education for veterinary and human health professionals. In addition, the upcoming conference, the first new national veterinary continuing education conference in more than 40 years, will introduce an experience that will match the energy and level of continuing education that WVC participants expect, expanding Viticus Group’s legacy of delivering premier continuing education and networking opportunities. Specifically, with the concentration of veterinary professionals in the geographic areas near Nashville, the accessible and centrally located city provided a logical choice to create an additional home for Viticus Group.
To stay updated on Viticus Group expansion plans, visit viticusgroup.org and join the Alert List.
Source: WVC News release
Check out our guest interview with Dr. Anthony Pease, Viticus Group Chief Medical Offer, for more!
Hands-On Lab Learning Center Expansion Leads to Two WVC Conferences
Most of us know the harm that tools such as shock and prong collars can cause. But I worry that our focus on tools causes less dramatic aversive methods to go under the radar.
We do talk about some aversive methods not associated with tools. Things like molding, where a dog is forced into position. Scaring dogs with noises. Kicking or hitting. But you know what is discussed very little?
Extinction. Specifically, operant extinction of a positively reinforced behavior. An experience that can be so unpleasant to the learner it can provoke violence (Azrin et al., 1966) or depression (Huston et al., 2013; Ramnerö et al., 2016).
Here’s a definition:
The extinction operation is the discontinuation (cessation) of reinforcement as a consequence of a given behavior, leading to a decrease in the frequency of that behavior. — Mayer et al, 2018, p. 30.
A previously reinforced behavior yields—nothing. No consequence. The classic human example is a suddenly nonfunctional beverage or candy machine.
Tools such as shock and prong collars are used almost exclusively in positive punishment and negative reinforcement protocols. Extinction of a positively reinforced behavior is not an event associated with their normal use. But the experience of extinction can be anything from annoying to frustrating to devastating.
There are varying intensities, for lack of a better term, of extinction. When a trainer shapes behavior there will be episodes of extinction, in which a previously reinforced approximation is no longer reinforced. But the more skilled the trainer, the fewer and more uneventful these are. A good trainer makes it plain through the environmental setup and their actions what the dog should try next. I.e., how they can continue to access reinforcement with slight changes to their behavior.
Sometimes we train a new behavior to access the same or similar reinforcement as a problem behavior. No matter how kind and thoughtful we are, our goal is to extinguish the problem behavior in that context. But good planning and providing a clear path to reinforcement for the dog can help soften the experience.
But contrast these carefully designed plans with, for example, the commonly recommended method to ignore dogs who jump up without giving them any clue about what to do instead. Many people have discussed the inefficacy of this method, including me. But besides being ineffective, any abrupt change like that can be unkind. (Depending on how this plan is implemented, it very likely incorporates negative punishment as well.)
Alanna Lowry, DVM, and wonderful, “naughty” Flynn were hamming it up in the adjacent photo. But it is no fun for most dogs to have their human completely ignore them.
That’s the kind of extinction scenario I am focusing on in this discussion: a previously reinforced behavior that is no longer reinforced at all. A complete cessation of reinforcement with no alternative offered. The dog has no ability to remedy the situation, i.e., access that reinforcer again.
This happens not only in training, but in life.
Noting quickly: there also exists extinction of negatively reinforced behavior, so-called escape extinction. I may write about this in the future.
Here is an extreme example that I hope none of us would ever do. Let’s say that every evening you have a play session with your dog. You make several preparations for this. You may change your clothes. Perhaps you’ll grab some treats from a jar. You may get some special equipment and set it up.
You make all the preparations, grab your dog’s toy, and head for the play area. Your dog is accompanying you—excited and ready for some fun. You’ve started the familiar launch sequence. But when you get to the area where you normally play, instead of starting the play, you put the toy out of the dog’s reach and sit down and look at your phone. You ignore your dog.
It’s painful for me to even imagine this because of how hard it would be on my dog. He would try different things to engage me in play for a while. I would be able to see the effects of the extinction process in his behavior as his behavior began to vary. I would likely see frustration-related behaviors if I let it go on too long (Bentosela et al., 2008; Jakovcevic et al., 2013). In other words, fallout.
If I did that every day (completely stopped playing with him after setting up to do so), I wonder how long it would take before he stopped trying to play with me? Again, this is sad to think about.
In the photos below, Lewis’ Jolly Ball, a favorite toy, is hanging in the tree behind me. He is using a variety of behaviors to remedy the situation. This is typical of an extinction process, where the variability of behavior increases. It is a diluted extinction burst.
I call it diluted because was not a true extinction event. I cherrypicked the photos out of a quick 60-second video. I did not consistently ignore Lewis. I interacted with him between these shots, and I put some peanut butter on the tree to set up that shot. It was still excruciating for me to do, to slightly confuse him and to delay the fun for 60 seconds. Of course we played heartily with the Jolly Ball afterward.
There is a lay term for this activity: teasing. “Look! Here’s this thing you want but you can’t have it.”
It worries me that suddenly ceasing to reinforce a behavior that had been reinforced in the past would not break any stated guidelines about force free training I’ve seen. Although they are acknowledged as problematic in the Hierarchy of Behavior-Change Procedures and in the LIFE model, professional organizations don’t seem to cover them in their requirements and position statements and they are not a frequent topic of discussion for individual trainers.
We are technically not doing anything to the dog at all. Not touching him, not scolding him. Yet—it can be cruel.
I made that example extreme to focus on the potential harm. but this type of thing happens in smaller ways. It happens when we suddenly change routines. Here’s a real example from my life with Lewis.
Lewis eats most of his breakfast out of a food toy. But for several months, I broke up his breakfast period with a training session. He got to choose when to switch. I went in with a handful of 15–20 higher-value kibble pieces. I made myself available and waited for him to take a break (good matching law exercise), then we’d have a quickie training session. Then he went back to his food toy.
Over the months, I noticed that we had a hard time in those sessions. He was jumpy and mouthy. He seemed conflicted, likely because of having to leave one food source for another. Duration behaviors such as front-paws-on-a-platform, shown in the top and adjacent photos, were extra difficult. The adjacent photo is from one of those sessions; the top one was posed much later. See the difference?
I had done this mid-breakfast training with Clara before, but she was a different dog with a different history with me. She moseyed over to play with me, then moseyed back to her food toy. It took me way too long to perceive the negative experience for Lewis.
After I noticed, I decided to stop our mid-breakfast training session.
I put some thought about how to break our routine in the kindest way possible. Even though the session seemed stressful, he would eagerly approach me when it was time and gobble the food. So he would notice its absence for sure.
What were the cues for this interruption? An obvious one was my entering the hallway where he eats. So if I stopped coming in, would he stop “expecting” the session? No. Another part of the cue was time. Not time of day, but the amount of time elapsed from when he started eating. Somewhere around four minutes. I could not prevent the passage of time. So I couldn’t prevent the little period of extinction where he would perform anticipatory and approach behaviors like looking up from his toy or coming to the gate where I would normally enter. Those were the behaviors that would no longer be reinforced if I ceased the mid-breakfast session.
Was this going to be grueling for him? Not likely. To anthropomorphize a bit, the human parallel would be something like, “Well, I guess we aren’t doing that anymore. Damn. I liked that food. Oh well, I’ve got this other food to work on.”
But making a plan and softening this change provided good practice for me to learn how to handle more intense extinction scenarios that might come along.
To eliminate the training session, I planned to fade the cues by softening them or moving them, and to decrease the amount of the special kibble (but not to zero).
Here are the steps I took.
My final behavior is to come in when he is about finished with his food toy (which I have always done anyway), hand him a couple of pieces of the special food, then help him retrieve any pieces of kibble he can’t get. The last is part of our normal routine.
My first example with the play session may have seemed overblown. And my example of fading the interruption in Lewis’ breakfast may seem insignificant.
But I want to practice thinking about this, working out the problems to prevent unpleasantness in my dog’s life. My thought processes will help me if something bigger comes along.
Whether it’s in training or in life, whether it’s planned or sudden and unavoidable, don’t ever forget about the hurt of extinction. If it’s necessary to discontinue a regular activity your dog enjoys, soften the blow in any way you can. And if you have a training credential, ask your accrediting body whether extinction without differential reinforcement is worth addressing in guidelines and position statements.
What kinds of extinction scenarios have you noticed with your dog, either in training or daily life? What happens when there is a cue for a behavior and there is no reinforcement available for that behavior anymore? This can include some very sad scenarios, such as a breakup or a death in the family. (In the future, I hope to write more about the loss of Clara. It hit Lewis hard.) But there are so many less intense things that happen: schedule changes and the like. How does your dog handle them? How do you help your dog?
Azrin, N. H., Hutchinson, R. R., & Hake, D. F. (1966). Extinction‐induced aggression. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of behavior, 9(3), 191-204.
Bentosela, M., Barrera, G., Jakovcevic, A., Elgier, A. M., & Mustaca, A. E. (2008). Effect of reinforcement, reinforcer omission and extinction on a communicative response in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Behavioural processes, 78(3), 464-469.
Huston, J. P., de Souza Silva, M. A., Komorowski, M., Schulz, D., & Topic, B. (2013). Animal models of extinction-induced depression: loss of reward and its consequences. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(9), 2059-2070.
Jakovcevic, A., Elgier, A. M., Mustaca, A. E., & Bentosela, M. (2013). Frustration behaviors in domestic dogs. Journal of applied animal welfare science, 16(1), 19-34.
Mayer, G. R., Sulzer-Azaroff, B., & Wallace, M. (2018). Behavior analysis for lasting change, fourth edition. Sloan.
Ramnerö, J., Folke, F., & Kanter, J. W. (2016). A learning theory account of depression. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 57(1), 73-82.
Copyright 2024 Eileen Anderson
A few weeks ago I was finally able to post about losing my first dog, Kitsune. Our beloved Kitsune passed away peacefully on January 31st. We had just celebrated his 15th birthday a little over a month earlier. As any dog lover can imagine, the loss of such a special member of our pack has really hit hard. We got our second dog, Fenrir, when Kitsune was 8 years old. Fen was raised with Kitsune! From the day we brought Fen home, when he was 9 weeks old, until Kitsune passed away, there wasn’t a single day of Fen’s life that he didn’t have his big brother by his side.
I knew that staggering my dogs’ ages by so many years would most likely mean that I’d eventually have to deal with losing one well before the other. Having Fenrir here to cheer me up has been such as blessing as I navigate losing Kitsune. But I, sadly, have to admit that the past month and a half or so has also been hard on little Fen.
The first couple of days without Kitsune were especially hard. Fen whined a lot, and spent time running around the house trying to find Kit. Our biggest problem, by far, in dealing with Fenrir after the loss of Kitsune has been getting Fen to eat consistently.
Fen has always been a very picky eater. It’s a relatively common Alaskan Klee Kai trait. As picky as Fen’s always been, he got about 3,000 times worse after we lost Kit. I think the problem has been twofold. Fen has always been a sensitive dog. He gets upset easily, and when he’s upset he doesn’t eat. In addition to that, I’ve come to realize that I relied a lot on Kitsune to help me encourage Fen to eat regularly. Kit loved food. Fen grew up knowing that if he didn’t eat his food when it was offered Kitsune would happily eat it for him! Plus, Kit’s love of food was contagious. Fen, not wanting to be left out of the excitement of meal time, would often eat something if he saw Kitsune eating it first.
Since having Fen as an only dog, meal times have been a huge struggle. Not only can I often times not get him to eat dog food, but he won’t take table scraps or treats either. Before anyone asks, yes Fenrir has seen a vet and gotten a clean bill of health. His lack of appetite is, thankfully, not being caused by a physical health issue.
If your dog displays these signs, or others, after the loss of a friend there’s a good chance that the symptoms are being caused be grief. However, please always take your dog to the vet for a full exam if he/she displays new or worsening mental and/or physical symptoms.
Changing aspects of your dog’s life, such as their schedule or environment, too quickly after the loss of a friend can be stressful. Everyone grieves differently. I know some people are eager to put away their deceased dog’s belongings. But it may be beneficial to leave items, such as bedding and toys, in place as these types of items can bring comfort to your remaining dog. Try to keep your remaining dog(s) schedule as consistent as possible. If you are ultimately going to make changes to his/her schedule try to do so slowly.
That being said, if changing some aspect of your dog’s life will help them better cope then don’t be afraid to make changes. With Fenrir, for example, I’ve decided to change his diet. Feeding him the same food that I fed him and Kitsune just wasn’t working. In our case, changing Fen’s food has been a better decision than continuing to attempt to offer him a food that he just wasn’t interested in eating anymore.
This one is hard. Our pets can be an amazing source of comfort when we’re dealing with sadness. But dogs pick up on our emotions, and when they are already feeling the stress of losing a housemate, seeing their favorite people morn can add to their distress. On days when I’m feeling particularly sad, I try to step away from Fen for a while. I take the time I need to express my sadness away from my dog. I’d never want to cause him excess stress because I’m having a bad day.
Because our dogs are so amazing at picking up on our emotions, finding ways to help yourself cope with your shared grief can go a long way towards helping your dog. Help yourself so that you can better help those around you, your remaining dog included. Remember that you can’t pour from an empty cup.
This tip may sound stupid but it can be easy to forget to complete basic tasks when you’re dealing with a really stressful situation. I know when I was dealing with Kitsune being sick, and the direct aftermath, it was hard to complete everyday tasks such as walking Fen. Even on your worst days, make sure you are attending to your remaining dog’s basic needs. Forgetting to feed or walk Fido is going to increase his stress levels.
Go for a walk, play in the yard, or just snuggle up in front of the TV. After your dog loses a friend, he may feel lonely. Spending time with your dog can help him feel more secure.
Exercise can be healing, especially for dogs. If the weather is bad and you can’t walk your dog, or otherwise exercise them outside, take a look at our previous post about exercising your dog indoors.
Physical exercise is awesome, but don’t forget that mental stimulation is important too! Keeping your dog’s mind busy can help them focus on positive things other than their grief. Consider engaging your dog’s mind by brushing up on their training, having them play with interactive toys such as puzzles, or letting them explore new areas.
If your dog is showing extreme symptoms of grief, or doesn’t seem to be making improvements over time, don’t be afraid to enlist the help of your veterinarian. Your pet may require more intense behavioral intervention or, in some cases, medication to help them get through an especially difficult time.
But for the most part, like with people, your dog is going to require time to deal with their grief. Be patient with your pooch as he/she adjusts to a new normal. Change is hard, especially when chance means moving forward without a beloved pack member. Try to be understanding of what your dog is going through. They are not trying to give you a hard time when they act out, they are having a hard time. Dogs are social animals that form strong bonds with family members. Losing a pack member isn’t easy. Be patient and give them the time they need to adjust.
This is a question that seems to come up a lot when a dog passes from a multi-dog household. The answer, frustratingly enough, is that it depends. It depends on you, your remaining dog, your unique situation. There’s a lot to take into account before thinking about bringing a new dog home.
Remember that a new dog will never replace the dog that was lost. Adding a new dog to the mix won’t necessarily ease the grief that your current dog is experiencing. A new friend may bring a lot of joy, but (puppies especially) can also bring a lot of frustration. If your current dog is feeling down, he may not be in the right frame of mind to deal with an exuberant new pack member. You know your dog(s) best. Sometimes adding a new member to the pack cheers everyone up and helps hearts to heal. Other times it’s too much too soon. It can be a good idea to allow your current dog, and yourself, time to fully process grief before thinking about any new additions.
I’ve been utilizing these tips for Fen and I think he’s doing ok. Lately he’s been showing more excitement about going for walks and play, and he has stopped wandering the house searching for Kit. Our biggest remaining issue is that Fen still hasn’t been eating consistently and I can tell, at times, that he’s still feeling down. I’m going to continue spending a lot of time with Fen, and I’ve decided to try a new food with him. I’m hoping if I find something he likes the taste of a bit more it will help encourage him to eat. The food he was on worked well when we had another dog around to help encourage Fen to eat. Now that Fen is an only dog, it’s just not cutting it anymore.
I’ll keep you all up to date on Fenrir’s progress. For more current updates consider following us on Facebook and/or Instagram.
Comment below! Did I miss anything? If you’ve, sadly, had to help your dog going through a loss what are some things you did that helped him/her feel better?
Posting regularly here has been hard for me since we lost Kit. I know topics like these are important, but writing about loss, and just dogs in general, when we’re still dealing with a lot of grief isn’t easy. I want to get back to posting here more often, but decided that going back to my every week schedule is too much for now. Going forward, at least for now, I decided that I’m going to try to stick to a every other Thursday posting schedule.
We’ve, unfortunately, been dealing with content scrapers stealing our articles. You shouldn’t be seeing this article on any site other than pawprintpetblog.com! If you’re reading this article on any other site, we’d love for you to take the time to contact us and let us know and, if you have the time, stop by and visit us on our official site! Thanks you.
a Guest Post by Cat Topia
For cats, the right environment and mental engagement are crucial to staying healthy and happy. Just like humans, cats need more than food, water, and shelter—they need mental and physical enrichment to truly thrive. Without proper enrichment, cats can experience boredom, which may lead to serious health issues. Let’s explore ways owners can add extra enrichment into their lives, such as through a catio.
Enrichment for cats is more than entertainment; it’s essential to their well-being. In the wild, cats are natural hunters, driven to explore, hunt, and interact with their environment. Indoor cats, however, don’t have the same outlets to exercise these instincts, leading to potential boredom, stress, and even health issues.
Think of it like this: if you could never access the outdoors—no sun on your face, no sounds of nature, and no fresh scents of changing seasons—you’d likely feel restless, even anxious. Similarly, without engagement, your cat can become mentally and physically stifled. Providing enrichment, then, allows them the chance to engage in natural behaviors, reducing the negative effects of a restricted lifestyle and promoting both mental and physical health.
Without sufficient enrichment, cats can develop a range of behavioral issues, including:
Providing regular, engaging activities helps prevent these issues, making for a happier and healthier pet.
A catio (an enclosed, outdoor cat patio) is one of the most effective ways to provide both physical and sensory enrichment. For indoor cats, a catio offers a safe way to experience the outdoors, complete with fresh air, sunlight, and a variety of sights and smells. Here’s how a catio contributes to enrichment:
If a catio isn’t feasible, there are still plenty of ways to enrich your cat’s life:
By providing adequate enrichment, cat owners can help prevent a range of behavioral and health issues, giving their cats a happier and more balanced life. From a simple scratching post to a full catio, there are enrichment solutions for every space and budget. Remember, a well-enriched cat is a happy cat, and with some creativity, you can create a stimulating environment that keeps your feline friend active, engaged, and content.
I once read a quote about dogs that I don’t feel like trying to find right now. If I do end up finding it I’ll update this later. It was about how dog lovers must sign an invisible contract when they bring a new dog into their lives. You get insane amounts of unconditional love, snuggles, tail wags, laughter, happy days, and fun. But the price you eventually have to pay for all that is steep. I don’t have to type it. We all know what the price we pay is. I know all too well what the price we pay is, because I’ve recently paid it. I’ve been paying it. I think I paid in extra, because I started making deposits before my balance was due. Who do I talk to about a refund? I jest, of course. This post is about anticipatory grief. What is it? And what the heck does it have to do with dogs?
Probably somewhat obvious by the name, anticipatory grief, sometimes also referred to as preparatory grief, is a type of grief that is felt before a loss. Anticipating an impending loss can trigger strong emotions such as sadness, fear, anger, isolation, anxiety, or guilt. Anticipatory grief is often associated with an impending death, such as in situations where you are aware that yourself, or a loved one, is nearing the end of life. It can occur in other situations too, however. Some more common examples included feeling anticipatory grief over the impending loss of a relationship, such as a breakup or divorce, or a major life event such as a move or job change. “Regular” grief typically occurs after experiencing a loss. Anticipatory grief is grieving for a loss that has not yet occurred.
Common symptoms of anticipatory grief can include the following…
Sounds fun right (/sarcasm)? Although it’s thought that anticipatory grief can actually help some people mentally prepare for an impending loss, it’s not a pleasant experience to go through. The symptoms of anticipatory grief can be bad enough that they negatively impact a person’s everyday life.
Studies on anticipatory grief have been pretty inconclusive. For some people, it does seem to come with some benefits. Anticipating a major loss before it occurs can help some people to prepare for what is to come. It can give them time to come to terms with the loss before it happens, which can sometimes make it easier to do things such as say their goodbyes to loved ones, or make necessary preparations ahead of time. For some people, anticipatory grief can make dealing with a loss easier because they’ve had time to process things ahead of time.
For other people, anticipatory grief can be, at best, just the beginning of their grieving process. It doesn’t always adequately help people to prepare for experiencing a loss. At worst, for others, it can be the beginning stage of prolonged grief disorder. Between 7% and 10% of adults experience prolonged grief disorder, according to the American Psychiatric Association, which can cause intense, persistent, long term symptoms of grief.
Anticipatory grief can be especially hard. Oftentimes anticipatory grief ends because the normal grieving process has began. Many people will experience at least some symptoms of anticipatory grief up until the event they are preparatorily grieving for occurs.
Talking to understanding loved ones, friends, or even a therapist may help if you are experiencing anticipatory grief. If you are experiencing extreme symptoms, or symptoms that impact your physical health such as sleeplessness or lack of appetite you should talk to your doctor. Practicing mindfulness and self care can sometimes help ease symptoms. Try to maintain a healthy diet and sleep schedule, and exercise regularly if you can. Meditation or other relaxation exercises may help ease stress. Find what works for you! Everyone experiences grief in their own way, and what helps them to get through that grief may differ as well.
This is a dog blog after all. In January of this year (2024) I lost my first dog, my amazing best buddy Kitsune. After 15 years together, as you can probably imagine, dealing with his death has been hard. Kit was a live life loud kind of dog, and pretty much up until the day that he died he was making trouble. Trouble was (literally) his middle name and he 100% lived up to it! He had cancer, but it, unfortunately, took us a long time to figure out he had cancer. Who ever suspects that a dog who is barking at you for second dinner and racing around the house not only has cancer, but has advanced, terminal cancer? I certainly didn’t. Our vet didn’t either.
Despite not knowing about Kit’s cancer at the time, I experienced a lot of anticipatory grief especially throughout the last year or so of his life. I knew that Kit was getting old, and we started having to deal with more health issues with him. He was diagnosed with IVDD in 2022 so I worried a lot about him experiencing a flare up of that. He also had arthritis and a heart murmur that we had to stay on top of monitoring.
Let’s face it, health issues aside every senior dog owner knows they have a very sad day ahead of them. It’s the price we pay for all the amazing years of love and companionship our dogs give us. Caring for a beloved aging, senior dog can be a mentally exhausting experience. For me, I for sure had the symptom of “preoccupation with the terminal loved one” when it came to my anticipatory grief over Kitsune. I spent a lot of time worrying about Kit and trying to think of new ways to make his life even better. I’ll never regret doing everything I could to make every moment of his life as happy and as comfortable as possible, but I will admit that the amount of time I was spending worrying about him was causing me a lot of stress. I would cry sometimes thinking about losing him, which then made me feel frustrated. I didn’t want to spend whatever amount of time I did have left with him grieving him prematurely.
Was the anticipatory grief I experienced before losing my senior dog a good thing or a bad thing? I will say that it made me really focus a lot of attention on Kit. Because I was somewhat preoccupied with thinking about his death, I was hyper aware of how important it was to really appreciate the time I had with him. That last year or so of snuggles were extra sweet. I admit that I got quite lax when it came to any form of discipline, because how can you say no to a senior dog? Kit got all the snuggles, and walks, and (almost) all the treats that he wanted. He’d always been spoiled, but especially so in his last years of life. No regrets there.
I feel like really appreciating the time I spent with Kit, and spoiling him so much, in a small way did help me deal with his death. I knew when he died that we had given him a good life. That I didn’t take him for granted and that, other than not finding out about his cancer sooner, I didn’t have any major regrets when it came to how I cared for Kit, especially in his senior years.
But, at the same time, the anticipatory grief was hard. It was stressful and sad. In some ways, I feel like it may have been even harder than the actual grief I started dealing with after Kit died. The actual grief has been really hard, don’t get me wrong, but, for me at least, it’s not as anxiety inducing. It’s weird to feel like I’ve been grieving for a dog for so long, when he only died 3ish months ago.
I still have my Alaskan Klee Kai, Fenrir, and I know I’ll more than likely have other dogs in my life in the future. I hope I don’t experience anticipatory grief with Fenrir or any of my future dogs as strongly as I did with Kitsune. I’m confident that I can appreciate them in their senior years, the way I did with Kitsune, without the added stress of prematurely grieving them at the same time. Kit taught me so many important life lessons, one of them, sadly, being about all the hard aspects of living with, and losing, a senior dog. I’m hoping those lessons will make my next loss a bit easier to deal with, but I guess only time will tell. And hopefully it will be a very long time before I lose anyone else close to me!
In my last post I said I was going to try to stick to an every other week posting schedule here. Clearly that hasn’t been working out. I have to admit, that since losing Kit posting here has just been difficult. I’ve had some major writer’s block when it comes to writing about dogs, and writing about Kit still makes me cry. It’s still my plan to post here at least every other week eventually, but for now I’m just going to do what I can. For anyone who wants to hear from us more often, I’ve been more active on our Instagram and Facebook pages than I have here.
We are doing ok! My partner, Fenrir, and I are all really missing Kit. It just sucks so much not having him around. It feels like a big part of our little family is missing – because it is. I still have bad days, and sometimes bad weeks. But we’re ok. The weather here is finally warming up so we’ve been trying to spend a lot of time taking advantage of that. Nature therapy for the win! Everyday after work I spend time playing outside with Fenrir, and we’ve been fitting in as many spring hikes as we can find time for.
“Healing in grief is a lot like the onset of spring. It’s unreliable and fickle. One day it’s warmish and blue skies and we think, “Hey! We’re feeling better!” Then the next day -or week- it’s sleeting and gray again. But ever so slowly, we advance into better weather. We can’t rush it. We can’t control it. We can’t skip the dismal days. But we can trust that spring and then summer will come.”
– Dr.Alan Wolfelt
Have you ever experienced anticipatory grief? Did you find any techniques that really helped you to deal with it?
We’ve, unfortunately, been dealing with content scrapers stealing our articles. You shouldn’t be seeing this article on any site other than pawprintpetblog.com! If you’re reading this article on any other site, we’d love for you to take the time to contact us and let us know and, if you have the time, stop by and visit us on our official site! Thanks you.