Dr Sophia Yin at Sudima Hotel, Auckland and Dunedin

Friday 5 October

What Giraffes, Dogs Cats and Chickens have in common: Training Principles that Work for all creatures (or How to Think like a Dog, Cat, Horse, Rats…)

This session is designed to help you:

• Understand how animals learn – the basics of classical and operant conditioning and the implications for your interactions with your pets and patients
• Recognize and use the most effective ways to modify unwanted behavior
• Learn the nuances and technical skills needed to apply the science to every-day use

Understanding how pets learn and think: this is the science of training. Learning how to reward the right behavior at the right time: this is the art of training. Combine the two, and you’ll be able to successfully modify behavior in dogs or cats as well as horses, your housemates, or hippos. Learn the quickest ways to change behavior in any pet in the home situation as well as in the veterinary hospital.

Whether or not you’re aware of it, every time you interact with an animal, you are learning something and the animal is learning something too. In essence, each interaction is a training session. However, whether the animal is learning a desirable or undesirable behavior is another story. Understanding how pets learn and think: this is the science of training. Learning how to reward the right behavior at the right time and to project the right message with your body language: this is the art of training. Combine the two, and you’ll be able to successfully modify behavior in your dog or cat as well as a horse, your housemates, or even hippos. Using case studies and videos, you will see exactly how to use basic training principles in a simple two-step approach to solve common behavior problems

Recognising Brewing Aggression and Rapid Reversal of Brewing Behaviour problems

We see overtly unmanageable and aggressive dogs on a daily basis, but sometimes you might miss or ignore the cues when they are more subtle. Lack of appropriate action on your part early on can result in a pet that is sent home behaviorally worse than when it arrived. In this session, you’ll view video clips of seemingly innocuous behaviors and learn how they can quickly progress to aggression. You’ll learn the signs of fear and anxiety, the interactions humans have that inadvertently make the animal worse, and simple tips for approaching and interacting with these dogs that will allow you to handle them while helping them to feel calm and safe.

Saturday 6 Oct

Teaching Dogs to Learn to Earn

Every pet needs a human who can lead, but not like a dictator, rather more like a partner in a dance. In this presentation attendees will learn a style of leadership that fosters a sound understanding of how humans contribute to canine misbehavior, provides quick results, and can be performed by even those who are physically small or delicate. Attendees will see how Dr. Yin’s version of the learn to earn program helps owners set clear rules of behavior, communicate the rules through correct body language and timing of rewards and punishers, and provides an environment of more certainty and less stress for the pet. Attendees will see how this program can allow someone to change a dog’s behavior virtually overnight, and they will see the specific factors that make someone a good leader for their pet.

The many faces of Fear and Aggression

Have you ever had a dog that was perfectly fine greeting one dog but became a growling monster when greeting another? Or one who seemed OK greeting a neighbor in your house but got dangerously aggressive when greeting that same person in a new environment? Or one who looked like he was soliciting play from a stranger and then suddenly bit that person? In this session, you’ll learn how fear can manifest in different ways, with different dogs, and in different contexts. Just because a dog looks like he’s been “cured” in one situation does not mean he’s safe in all situations. Take away a variety of refined techniques to address fear and aggression issues in dogs. If you’re comfortable with the basics of handling aggression, you’ll learn some new tricks here.

Feuding Fido’s: Mending the Rift between Household Hounds

What do you do when household dogs don’t get along? Should you let them duke it out or try to manage it? This presentation shows why and how poor relations between family Fidos develop and what owners can easily do to prevent the problems. Attendees will see cases of such canine conflicts and the techniques for mending the rift. They’ll also learn why choosing one dog to be higher ranked and then backing up his status can backfire over the long run, and why punishing the dogs can make the situation worse. Treatment will focus on changing the underlying emotional conflict that drives the aggression.

Low Stress Handling of Difficult Dogs (and Cats)

Think you don’t have time to teach an old dog (or cat) new tricks? Think again! You influence an animal’s behavior every time you interact with him, so you might as well make it a positive experience for both of you. In this presentation, Dr. Yin shows how to modify each interaction—from the initial greeting to restraint for blood draws—to have maximum positive impact on the pet. You’ll learn how to do this quickly and safely, too. Examples include toweling techniques for dogs and cats, non-scruff holds for venipuncture, and using food motivators without further arousing an already hyperactive animal. This session focuses on how to quickly and easily modify handling and restraint techniques, based on the behavioral response of the dog and includes narrated video clips so you can see it being done. Ensure your patients love their visits to your hospital!

Sunday 7 Oct

Your Mouth’s saying one thing but your Body’s saying another

Many humans tend to focus on what they hear when they communicate. Dogs are more inclusive – they listen to the words and the tone but also take in the body language of the human or other animal doing the communicating. Because humans don’t often consider body language, many are giving mixed or unclear and inconsistent signals to their dogs. Dr. Yin will identify some of the most common ways people miscommunicate with dogs and then focus on how to match verbal and visual signals to improve dog communication skills.

Psychopharmacology—The Mystery revealed

From amitriptyline, to Xanax and more. What are these drugs? Do they really work? Are they really safe? Or could they be detrimental to an animal’s health? In this presentation we’ll explore how drugs could possibly affect behavior and why some drugs, if not used carefully, can be unsafe. Through animations designed specifically for this lecture, videos of illustrating cases, and stories from real life situations, you’ll see how drugs act on the nervous system to bring about a behavioral change. We’ll cover the various mechanisms guiding drug action in a memorable manner and will shed light on the various classes of behavioral drugs. Through Dr. Yin’s unique presentation of this topic, attendees will gain a respect and awe for the complexity of the brain and an understanding of why its mysteries are such a draw to the researchers who study it. They will also learn how to cooperate with their veterinarian in dealing with animals on behavioral medications.

Genes and Behaviour—working against fate

All behaviors are a combination of genes and environment—products of both nature and nurture. But what exactly does that mean? For instance, if a puppy is already aggressive to dog or to people at 8 weeks of age, does that indicate the behavior must be hereditary? If not what other factors could influence behaviors prior to this age and how do you tell if a behavior is hereditary? In this presentation attendees will gain a basic understanding of genes and how they affect behavior, see what other factors can effect even early behavior, and learn how scientists determine whether behaviors are hereditary or environmental based.

From Clever Hans to Current Day: Steps you can take to keep behaviour a science.

Studying animal behavior is like solving a mystery. Start with the clues, which generate questions.  Then develop a hypothesis as to what’s going on and make predictions based on your hypothesis. Next decide how best to make observations and which measurements are appropriate to test your predictions. Don’t miss Dr. Yin’s primer on conducting behavioral research including the scientific approach, developing a hypothesis, designing a study to test the hypothesis, gathering data and analyzing the results. Extra time is devoted to what makes behavioral research different from research in other fields and sample problems will be presented so attendees get a chance to work through the process of developing a question, making a hypothesis and then testing the hypothesis. This will help all attendees learn to think analytically.