Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Journal articles, stress, and anti-depressants with me and APDT

I’m teaching another online course for APDT: Analyzing Journal Articles: Pre-Natal Stress and Anti-Depressants. I’m trying something new with this one. It's just one week long. Basically, I’m going to be walking through a recent journal article that I thought had interesting implications for dogs. There will be several short lectures at different experience levels. Some will provide background in the area to students who don’t have an extensive science background. Some will be aimed at students who do know a lot of science and want to dig deeper into stuff that isn’t often covered in online courses. And some will be straightforward “what is this article about?”

It's an interesting article, about whether stress before birth can affect an animal’s personality and whether anti-depressant medication change reverse those effects. Hopefully it isn’t hard to see how this could be relevant to dogs with behavior issues.

If we don't get at least ten students signed up, we won’t do it, so go sign up now! You will get CE! If people do sign up and do enjoy it, I’m hoping to do more like this -- providing a way for dog trainers to keep up on recent research and get a better feel for what it’s like to read a scientific paper. So this is my test case. Will people be interested? I really hope so!

[ETA: Although the last time I checked, the APDT web page for this class lists it as "no CEUs," I checked with their education coordinator, and students completing this class will earn 4 CEUs. So yes, you will get CEU credit for it!]

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