During my time as a dog behavior consultant in Malta, a new client came to me with the kind of request most professionals secretly dream about. When I asked him to describe the problem, he said, “Oh, they don’t have any problems. I just want to make them happy.” He paused, then added, “From their point of view.” I was thrilled to work with his five shepherds for quite a while (and the generous fee did not hurt either). For them, I designed my first sensory garden and developed individualized play plans. The experience left me wondering whether these dogs were free of behavior problems precisely because they were happy. Their physiological, safety, social, and cognitive needs were all being met. They were neither bored nor overwhelmed by sensory input. Their preferences mattered. They were understood, and they were loved.​Years later, at the Dog Science Conference, I had a quick talk with Michael Shikashio, a leading expert on canine aggression. He agreed that in many serious aggression cases, the real turning point is not a specific training protocol, but environmental management. That brief conversation reinforced something I found out before: many behavior problems, including those that tear families apart, send dogs to shelters, and sometimes result in euthanasia, may be preventable through thoughtful changes to a dog’s daily life and their relationship with their caregiver. In other words, we need to learn exactly that — how to make dogs happy from their perspective, and how to talk to them in ways they can understand us.Together with Tyrone — my muse and partner in crimeThis question lies at the heart of ethology: how can we ask an animal about itself in its own language? A similar challenge exists in child psychology. Like dogs, children depend on adults and cannot always articulate how they feel. Yet science has developed many ways of understanding them, ranging from careful observation to experimental paradigms. My background in child psychology and psychometrics, combined with years of work as a behavior consultant, gave me the tools to develop these ideas further. This path eventually led me to the Human–Animal Interaction Lab, where a collection of scattered intuitions gradually took shape as formal research questions under the supervision of Dr. Monique Udell.
During my PhD training and work in the lab, we developed and validated the Dog Stress Level Questionnaire (DSLQ), a tool for assessing chronic stress in companion dogs. We also designed an evidence‑based approach to sniffing spaces, exploratory environments, and olfactory activities for dogs and their caregivers, and experimentally demonstrated that these interventions can reduce chronic stress, support resilience, and strengthen the dog–human relationship.
As often happens in science, answering one question opened the door to several more. Much of that inspiration came from the dogs in our study, who made full use of the freedom they were given to move, explore, and sniff on their own terms.
Could adding an operant component to detection training make it faster, more effective, or more enjoyable for dogs? Could we use a dog's primary sensory modality, olfaction, to help them acquire other skills more efficiently, for example by teaching working dogs to recognize critical visual cues? Our observations and early trials remain preliminary, but the results are promising.
The practical implications are equally compelling. How can we make pet-friendly spaces genuinely dog-friendly from the dog's perspective? How can we design games, toys, and activities centered on sniffing that are not only more engaging, but also more enriching, helping to build resilience and mitigate chronic stress?
I am excited to explore as many of these questions as I can and to discover new ones along the way. My goal is to help make dogs’ training and work both effective and genuinely enjoyable, to strengthen the bond between dogs and their caregivers, and to help dogs live happier lives. From their point of view.