Social Pain in Dogs by Dr. Frank McMillan - The emotions that arise when one’s social bonds with another are impaired or lost – such as feelings of isolation, loneliness, and rejection – comprise one type of emotional pain, called “social pain”. Recent research has found that the term “pain” is not just a metaphor, but is based on the finding that social pain is processed in the same brain regions where physical pain is processed. For social species, like elephants, horses, sheep, rats, guinea pigs, dogs, and humans, social pain plays a powerful role in one’s well-being and quality of life. For today’s domestic dog the issue may be of greater importance than for any other species on Earth. Evidence indicates that through domestication the emotional bonding propensity of dogs toward humans has been greatly amplified, which appears to have resulted in both greater joy for dogs when in the company of humans, but also greater suffering when denied human companionship. From Fearful to Fear Free by Dr. Jennifer Merlo - Fear Free creates a more emotionally protective experience for both pets and people during the delivery of physical care. Attending to animal wellbeing by way of Fear Free teachings is an integral way to encourage happier, safer, more restful housing, interactions and improve successful adoption of pets. In this talk we'll cover what Fear Free is, why it's important, how we can integrate it into everyday interactions and care of pets, and how it can be incorporated into the pet's home once adopted as a key way to decrease stress during transition, increase safety, strengthen the human-animal bond, and ultimately improve adoption success. Saving lives, one nose at a time by Laurie Horn, CPDT-KA - Learn how scentwork benefits all the dogs in your care and why it should be the #1 enrichment in your shelter. Hear from shelters that know first hand how it helps dogs become more adoptable and can alleviate some troublesome behaviors. Reactive dogs – what do they do, why do they do it and how do we help them? by Namiko Ota-Noveskey, MS - We frequently use adjectives to describe dogs, but descriptions don’t tell us what dogs actually do. When we label dogs as reactive, we likely see a variety of different responses. In addition, the motivation for their responses are likely just as variable. In this session, we discuss how to observe responses, identify antecedents, how best to minimize undesirable responses and replace with appropriate ones in shelters and/or multi-species environment.

Sponsor:Michigan Pet Alliance
Speaker(s):Frank McMillan, DVM, Jennifer Merlo, DVM, Laurie Horn, CPDT-KA, Namiko Ota-Noveskey, MS

Contact: Namiko Ota-Noveskey
 Email: namiko@michiganpet.org
 Web: https://www.michiganpet.org/2024conference/