Time To Raise The Bar
There are few fields in which having grown up either performing a task or with the student, is enough to qualify one as a professional and justifies charging for one's services. Unless of course we are talking about dog trainers. I grew up reading and might be able to teach plenty of kids to read ...
Getting It Our Way
I was having a conversation recently with parents about hitting small children as a disciplinary action. These were by almost anyone's definition good parents. They loved their children, took great care of them, fed them well, played with them, read stories, and did all the things we would recommend parents do with their children. They ...
Got Change?
Nothing to worry about here! When we are training our fearful dogs we are facilitating a change in how they respond to events or objects (including us and other animals) they are exposed to. There is likely an endless array of ways we can come up with to do this, but ultimately what ...
Ducks Don’t Need Quacks Either
There is a science to behavior change in animals. That most pet owners are unaware of that is not surprising. That there are dog trainers out there who are unaware of it is disastrous. I know just enough about my car and computer to turn them on and use them, when all is going according ...
Folk Healers
We have a long, rich history of folk healing. In modern times many of the remedies people still rely on either include or refer back to cures used before people understood the cause of disease. "Hair of the dog," the term used to suggest that having a drink to help ease the effects of a ...
Good Enough Maybe Isn’t
Dogs are remarkable. They are so adept at figuring out what we want that we are often led to believe that we know what we're going. Enough dogs figured out how to change their behavior when faced with Cesar Millan's alpha rolling, tssking, and neck pokes that people came to believe that they knew how ...
Say Thank You
Thanks for sticking around during a walk in the woods If your kids bring you breakfast in bed it's best not to respond, "I hope you didn't leave me a mess in the kitchen to clean-up!" Or accept a gift and explain why it's not something you'd ever use. You could I suppose ...
Surviving in the Wilderness
When I was younger I trained to be an "outdoor leader" so I could take people into the mountains or on rivers, for days at a time. I studied wilderness first aid and carried a knife to cut ropes, wore a helmet and PFD on rivers, enjoyed shopping for clothes and shoes designed using the ...
Losing Your Audience
I enjoy reading nonfiction and watching documentaries. But there are some books and videos I will avoid watching or stop watching, they are too upsetting to me. It won't matter how important someone tells me the information I'd be gaining is or how artfully it is presented. There are award-winning films I have not watched ...
