The Dog Talk Project

Greetings,

I would like to invite members of this dog forum to participate in a new on-line research program involving owners and their dogs. The Dog Talk Project (The DogTalk Project - Home) is a web-based system of surveys that studies a wide range of dog-related topics, including dog owners’ daily activities and routines (i.e. how we live with and love our dogs), dog health care practices, behavior, training, breed preferences and attitudes, the social effects of dogs, and nutrition and feeding practices. Many interesting results are posted on our “Results Pages†and are updated regularly. Participation is free and is completely voluntary. Participating dog owners have a wide variety of dog interests and professions, and include dog sports enthusiasts, professional trainers and behaviorists, veterinarians, veterinary technicians, breeders, shelter and rescue professionals, dog sitters/walkers, and of course, pet owners who simply love spending time with their canine companions!

Please feel welcome to visit the Dog Talk Project to learn more about this project (The DogTalk Project - Home) and to share your dog-related experiences and knowledge.

Best wishes,
Linda Case
Administrator, The Dog Talk Project (http://www.dogtalkproject.com; [email protected])
Adj. Assistant Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of IL
Owner, AutumnGold Consulting (AutumnGold Consulting - Technical Writing and Consulting on Dog and Cat Nutrition, Health, and Behavior )

I was going to participate until I saw a link to "The Dog Whisperer" on you page. NO THANKS!

Ads on our Dog Talk Site

Hi Puppydog - YIKES!! Thank you for letting us know. We DO NOT support or promote Cesar Milan. Ads show up automatically from Google and we are not informed about what they put up. However, I CAN ban ads and am going into Google right now to do so. Please do participate - we would love to have you on Dog Talk! (If you would like more confirmation that we use only +R-based training methods, please go to AutumnGold's website.

Thanks so much for letting me know about this; I am on the site often but had not seen this ad before getting your note.

Linda
Linda Case
Administrator, The Dog Talk Project (http://www.dogtalkproject.com; [email protected])
Adj. Assistant Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of IL
Owner, AutumnGold Consulting (AutumnGold Consulting - Technical Writing and Consulting on Dog and Cat Nutrition, Health, and Behavior)

Good to hear! I will head there just now and see what it is all about.

Hi Again - Just as an update - The ad you mentioned was not showing up for me, until this morning, when I finally saw it! I went to the site and the ad is acutally not for Cesar Milan, but for a trainer who professes to use positive methods. However, we are still banning the ad, as it implies that it is Cesar Milan (guess that is backfiring a bit on this guy....). We just banned it, and it can take a few hours to go into effect. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention!

Dog Talk Project - New Survey!

A new survey is available on the Dog Talk Project website (The DogTalk Project - Home). "The Five Most Important Health Care Practices of Dog Owners" examines the regular health and grooming practices that owners use to care for their dogs. Like our first behavior survey, this broad examination of health care will provide initial data to help us to develop more detailed health-related surveys in the future. Dog Talk currently is collecting data on four additional surveys:

"A Day in The Life of Your Dog"
"Breed Preferences: Why we love the dogs we do"
"Dogs and Friends: How dogs affect our social lives"
"The 10 Most Common Behavior Problems in Dogs"

Best wishes,

Linda Case
Dog Talk Project administrator
[email protected]

Oh. The American Staffordshire Terrier and the American Pit Bull Terrier are two separate breeds.

Am Staffs vs. Pit Bulls

Hi Renee,

Actually, some breed registries classify them as the same breed. We realize that there is not 100 percent agreement about this, but chose to classify the Pit Bull and the Am Staff together because they are still identified as the same breed by the United Kennel Club and, to some degree, by AKC.

According to a quote from the book, "The American Pit Bull Terrier": "There are several types of dogs that are commonly called "Pit Bulls." Primarily, these are the American Pit Bull Terrier (APBT), the American Staffordshire Terrier (AST), and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier (SBT). All three of these dogs share common ancestry but have been subsequently bred emphasizing different breeding criteria. Due to this divergence, some people feel that they are now different breeds. Others choose to view them as different "strains" of the same breed. Neither view is wrong, as it comes down to how one defines what a "breed" is.

Thanks for your point though - it is a good one, and something we struggled with when we were compiling our breeds list.

Best wishes,
Linda Case
Dog Talk Project

Those of us who love the breed are fighting the "let's lump 'em all together" mindset, one that is fostered by BSL advocates.

There is no such breed as a "Pitbull."