Believe or not, the independent canines and felines in our lives can be trained. "Many people are surprised to find that training cats is not that hard," explains Julie Posluns, principal and teacher ...

In her new book, Reaching the Animal Mind ($25, Scribner), Karen Pryor offers a lively, wide-ranging overview of the use of operant conditioning for training, well, nearly any animal you can think of.

I was watching an intermediate level dog obedience training class where the dogs were being trained to respond to hand signals. Floating over the usual class related sounds produced by people's voices ...