In my world the reality is that those of us living with a dog with fear-based behavior challenges must be better than average pet owners. I say this meaning no offense to average pet owners. Anyone who chooses to live with an animal is ahead of the curve in my book. Most however do not add a dog to their lives in order to have ...
Dogs who grow up in a home have dozens of opportunities a day to approach people and be reinforced for it. This means it's a good thing from the pup's perspective. They might get a treat, a cuddle, a scratch or the chance to tug on your shoelaces. Dogs, like my dog Sunny who spend their first months or years kenneled with little positive human ...
I suppose that when one has lived long enough it's easy to slide into waxing philosophical about life, and I have definitely stepped onto that slope. Having been fortunate to have what I needed in life as far as my physical needs being met--safe home, food, medical care, etc., I have had the luxury to invest time, money and energy into the things that bring ...
I suspect that those of us who work with dogs in any capacity, love them, respect them and want them to have the best lives possible. Yet I can't help but be surprised and disappointed when I hear and read information about dogs being shared that does more harm than good, or opportunities to educate the pet owning population are missed. Research on the social ...
In May I'll be traveling to the islands of Puerto Rico, Culebra and Vieques with a group to contribute our energy to the cause of changing how people handle and train their dogs. No doubt there will be people who will embrace the information we'll be sharing about force-free and coercion-free training with the enthusiasm of someone who has been adrift at sea waiting for the ...
Go on Sunny, there's fun ahead. When a dog performs a fearful or aggressive behavior it's as though they are saying, "I don't have the skills to behave in any other way in this situation." Why would you want to make them repeat themselves? If you were to drop a kid into a pool that was just deep enough they didn't feel completely safe ...
One of my goals for this blog, my Facebook pages, group, and tweets, is to try to stave off the inclination pet owners and many dog trainers have to jump on any bandwagon that comes along in regard to training dogs, or to keep throwing different sh*t against the wall and hoping something sticks. There is no shortage of advice, methods, equipment and supplements out ...
I haven’t been involved in the dog training field as long as some, but it’s been long enough to observe that we are as prone as the next person to hitch rides on bandwagons as they go through town. Our interest in the latest new thing is at once a good thing, possibly benign or potentially dangerous. If someone wants to spend weeks seeing if ...
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 but if your kid has dyslexia it would be wiser ...
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 also happened to think it was ok to hit them, ...
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