What Makes You Click?

In this episode I get to chat with longstanding friend, journalist and best selling cat author, Celia Haddon, with whom I have recently co-authored my latest book "Being your cat - what's really going on in your feline's mind" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Your-Cat-Inside-Felines/dp/178840405X/ref=monarch_sidesheet). I learn that trying to interview a journalist is not an easy thing to do, and perhaps the tables get turned on me. We discuss a lot of cat literature and out views on living an...

Bob Cook is a pioneering equine veterinarian and emeritus professor at Tufts University, working in the field of ear, nose and throat medicine, who has championed a reconsideration of how we interact and communicate with horses. In his career he has identified many performance and medical problems which he was the first to attribute to the use of the bit. I got to know Bob, through his work on headshaking in horses and his work directly inspired some of my own PhD on this topic (and coinciden...

I catch up with Turid Rugaas, who I first met at a conference at Cambridge, where she introduced her ideas on calming signals and reading dogs to many people in the UK for the first time. I immediately got where she was coming from, unlike some of the audience, as we both remember. We get to chat here about her early life (with horses) but also the issue of control, and our shared concern over what seems to be a growing tendency not to allow a dog to make mistakes, and learn from them. A focu...

In this episode I chat to long standing friend Debbie Horwitz. It is very informal and just like old times. needless to say we chat about cats (mainly our own cats) but also dogs. Debbie has one of the most amazing videos that she leant me a long time ago, of a dog showing a sequence of signals before airsnapping in front of the technician who is ignorign all the other signals. I have taught so many students using this video, and I am sure so many more have benefited from it. I can't sh...

I finally got to catch up and chat withKersti, who is a veterinary behaviourist certified in Australia, UK and North America. So she really does see the field from many perspectives. For her MSc she did a pivotal study which looked at what puppies actually gain from socialisation classes. We discussed this and other things when we caught up. Please don't forget to subscribe to be kept informed when new episodes become available, and if you enjoy it a like helps spread awareness of the s...

A book that anyone with an interest in companion animal including horse behaviour should read is "beware the straw man". In my latest podcast I get to catch up with its author Linda Case - The Science Dog. A terrific communicator of science, who has a wonderful way of highlighting how we need to think about the various bits of science coming out. She has a particular passion for nutrition as well, so needless to say we end up chatting a lot about what you should and should not feed your dog. ...

Pilley Bianchi, also known as Debbie Pilley, is the daughter of the late John Pilley, the Psychology Professor who owned Chaser, the dog with the largest vocabulary of any dog ever recorded. In this episode, we catch up to chat about her life with both of these characters and her thoughts about their legacy, alongside her own own insights into how animals learn. We discuss both of our experiences about what helps dogs understand language better and what does not, as wel...

In this episode I chat with pioneering behaviourist and advocate for professional standards in clinical animal behaviour David Appleby. We talk about his early experience with the RAF and Guide Dogs for the Blind before he moved into managing problem behaviour, his work on effect of early experience on later behaviour and separation related problems. Needless to say, given his role in leading the professionalisation of the field in the UK, we also discuss the issue of regula...

In this episode, I get to catch up with best selling author and canine psychologist Alexandra Horowitz. Famous for her research on the guilty look and olfactory mirror test in dogs amongst other things, we discuss this work further and her new book. Alexandra has long been interested in understanding the umwelt (the personal perspective) of other animals, and like her book, she tries to discover what it is like to be a dog. She is a professor at Barnard College, Columbia Univ...

In this episode I get to chat to someone I have always considered a deep thinker on human animal relationships and anthrozoology. I have often described him as "healthy sceptic" of the reported claims concerning the impact of pets on people., but he is also a leading figure in highlighting are moral ambiguities towards animals. Some may find the content of this podcast challenging, but as we conclude, although there are no simple solutions, if we stop and think, we can still act in a go...