NY, NJ and Florida Metro Areas Dog Training

10/12/2026

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RABIES OUTBREAKS IN WILDLIFE: DOES YOUR DOG OR CAT NEED ANOTHER RABIES VACCINE?

Rabies is back in the headlines. The CDC issued a Health Alert Network advisory after reporting a 17% increase in questions about human exposure to rabid or potentially rabid animals during July and August compared to last year, and the USDA is preparing its annual airdrop of about 6.5 million rabies vaccine sachets for wildlife in the Southeast.

A recent case in Minnesota shows why rabies awareness matters. A cow in Brown County tested positive, 13 cows were quarantined, and nine people were advised to get post-exposure treatment. The owner first found the heifer lying flat with her head down. A veterinarian examined her and the owner gave oral medication with bare hands, and the next day a second veterinarian also gave oral medication without gloves. A third veterinarian euthanized her after obvious neurological signs developed, including uncoordinated hind legs, high-stepping, vocalizing, excessive salivation, and a high fever. That's what makes rabies different from many diseases: by the time the signs are obvious, exposure may have already happened.

Rabies is serious, but in practice the chance of your dog or cat ever getting it is extremely low. More than 90% of reported animal cases are in wildlife, and with roughly 130 million dogs and cats in North America, the incidence in pets is about 0.003%. Your pet is far more likely to develop an immune, degenerative, metabolic, or cancer-related disease.

The rabies vaccine is one of the more potent veterinary vaccines, and it has been associated with:

🐾 Autoimmune diseases
🐾 Hemolytic anemia
🐾 Polyarthritis
🐾 Thyroid disease
🐾 Anaphylactic shock
🐾 Epilepsy
🐾 Vaccine injection site cancer (fibrosarcoma)
🐾 Polyneuropathy, affecting muscles and nerves

Most pets won't have a reaction, but when the disease risk is extremely low and the vaccine can have serious side effects, I want pet parents to think carefully. Here's my approach:

🐾 Wait until your pet is 6 months old for the first rabies vaccine
🐾 Don't combine it with other vaccines
🐾 Don't give it if your pet is sick in any way
🐾 Consider a rabies titer at 1 year, and only revaccinate if the titer isn't protective. Dr. Ronald Schultz's studies showed dogs with rabies immunity 7 years after vaccination
🐾 Give it as infrequently as your pet's real exposure risk allows

The American Animal Hospital Association recommends rabies vaccines for all pets, even indoor ones, in case a bat gets into the house. I understand that concern, but I wouldn't vaccinate my own indoor cat, and I'd give my dog limited rabies vaccines.

Is rabies the biggest health threat to most pets? For most dogs and cats, no. Your pet is far more likely to develop immune disease, degenerative disease, metabolic disease, chronic inflammation, or cancer.

Read the full article: https://veterinarysecrets.com/rabies-vaccine-risks-2026/

Has your vet ever mentioned a titer? Tell me in the comments 👇

10/08/2026

100%. I've been training dogs for 24 years. I will no longer take this kind of client who is in denial. They WILL blame the trainer.
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If anyone can make sense of this, I’d genuinely appreciate it.

I had a phone call today and the very first thing I heard was:

“Are you the dog trainer? I need your help. My dog has just gone for me.”

Okay. So let’s start there.

I asked what happened and what breed the dog was.

There was a builder at the door. The dog doesn’t like strangers, was barking aggressively, and the owner decided to grab him by the collar and put him in his crate.

The dog redirected onto her.

He bit his owner.

A Collie.

So, can I help?

Yes.

But this isn’t a “quick training session and problem solved” situation.

Because the second I start explaining that this needs taking seriously, she immediately starts defending the dog.

“Oh, he would never bite me.”

Except…

HE JUST DID.

“But he would never normally.”

He doesn’t need to bite you every Tuesday at 3pm for it to count.

He has already shown you that under the right circumstances, he WILL bite you.

And this is where owners need to stop taking things personally and start listening.

Your dog doesn’t care what you believe he would do.

Your dog doesn’t care that you’ve had him for five years.

Your dog doesn’t care that “he’s never done it before.”

The behaviour happened.

And pretending it didn’t, minimising it, or making excuses for the dog doesn’t make you a responsible owner.

It makes you a dangerous one.

Because the biggest red flag here isn’t even the bite.

It’s the complete lack of understanding about why it happened and what could happen next.

If you cannot safely get your own dog away from a situation without putting your hands on his collar while he’s highly aroused, then you have a serious handling and management problem.

And if your first reaction to your dog biting you is:

“He would never do that.”

…then you’re not dealing with the actual problem.

You’re defending the dog from reality.

And unfortunately, dogs don’t get a second chance because their owners were in denial.

This is how dogs end up being labelled “dangerous,” “unpredictable” or “aggressive.”

Not necessarily because they’re bad dogs.

Sometimes because their owners repeatedly ignore the warning signs, misunderstand the behaviour, make the wrong decisions and then act shocked when the dog finally bites.

And then, when it inevitably happens again, the dog pays the price.

One bad decision away from a trip to the vets.

And the most frustrating part?

It could probably have been prevented.

But you can’t help an owner who thinks the problem is everyone else the builder, the situation, the dog, the trainer…

Anything except themselves.

I do not need or want clients like this, in my opinion they arnt looking for a trainer they are looking for someone else to blame.

10/08/2026

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10/08/2026

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The physics of a prong collar is simple, but it is often explained badly. A common claim is that because the prongs sit around the neck, they “spread pressure evenly”. Mechanically, that does not follow.

Force and pressure are not the same thing. Pressure depends on the force applied and the area over which it is delivered:

Pressure = Force ÷ Area.

A prong collar may spread the load through several links, but each link contacts the neck over a relatively small area. Several contact points do not automatically mean low pressure or prove that every point carries the same load.

A dog’s neck is not a perfect cylinder and the collar is not pulled equally from every direction. The leash pulls from one point and at changing angles. Movement, fit, friction, neck shape and tissue deformation alter where the load goes. Even flat collars do not produce uniform pressure on a moving dog.

This is why balloon demonstrations tell us little. A balloon is a thin, hollow, elastic membrane filled with air. A dog’s neck is a living structure made of skin, fat, fascia, muscle, blood vessels, nerves and the airway. It responds to force very differently.
So if a prong collar does not burst a balloon, that does not show that pressure on a dog’s neck is low or harmless (otherwise it would be an ineffective training tool). Equally, bursting a balloon would not prove that a prong collar injures a dog. It is the wrong physical model.

We also do not currently have good pressure mapping studies showing exactly what happens beneath individual prongs on living dogs. So science does not support claims that we know the pressure is “evenly distributed”.
What we can say is: Prongs positioned around the neck ≠ evenly distributed pressure.

There is also no evidence that dogs interpret a prong collar as a maternal correction. It's an appealing analogy. It isn't an experimentally demonstrated behavioural mechanism.

Reduced pulling does not prove that a collar is painless either. A dog may change behaviour because it learns how to reduce or avoid the pressure. That does not necessarily mean severe pain, but the sensation has to matter enough to alter behaviour.

10/06/2026

https://theconversation.com/why-old-dogs-might-be-able-to-teach-alzheimers-researchers-new-tricks-291257

As dogs age, their brains undergo similar changes to human brains, making them a valuable natural model to study dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.

10/06/2026

https://youtu.be/LEm9T3wU2_c?si=LHsXRKB-wC0pwDGv

"Your heart will melt and your spirit will soar when you come to un...

10/04/2026

10/04/2026

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10/03/2026

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