Every organism on the planet needs to behave in particular ways in order to survive. For some the behavior is more complex, for others it might be moving in one direction with their mouth (or whatever it is they have that allows nutrients in) open. Even microscopic organisms will change their behavior based on whether or not they are reinforced for a particular behavior. They ...
Guess what these dogs are looking forward to getting? From the comments I've been hearing and the stuff I've been reading on the internet one would be inclined to think that the use of food in training poses great problems or risks. I cannot think of one conversation I've had with a trainer who laments that their clients reinforce behaviors with food too ...
It seems that many of us go through our lives trying to make something better or fix something that we hold responsible for our troubles. Years ago I was traveling with a couple of friends. One an ex-housemate who I enjoyed and laughed with, the other, his girlfriend was a friend only the most superficial of ways. We worked at the same place and we ...
It stands to reason that if we have not ever lived with a seriously scared dog that we would not have developed the skills to work effectively with them. Even if we've assisted other people living with a dog like this, there's nothing quite like 24/7 to put our feet to the fire. I regularly speak with people embarked on the bumpy journey to change ...
Stop in for a visit to any one of the thousands of forums or groups devoted to dog training and behavior and you're likely to bump into a discussion about whether or not it's acceptable to punish dogs during training. There will be both reasonable and unreasonable comments from either side of the table. Punishment is a very effective consequence to apply in order to ...
It wouldn’t be the first time someone has used my discomfort with something they said or did, to turn the tables and make it my problem, but it was happening and for some reason I couldn’t let it go. One of the skills we all need to practice in this day and age of instant communication is to push ourselves away from the keyboard. Just ...
I should start this post with a disclaimer that I am not advocating against the use of the pieces equipment I am going to mention, rather that we should take a good long look at how and why we are using them. Routinely a post will make the rounds of the social media circuit about a dog who while playing with a dog, ended up ...
After years of flipping through the magazines strategically placed at the check-out in grocery stores, it was impossible not to notice that generations of young women are being schooled on how to apply mascara, bake a no-fail chocolate cake, and on what turns men off, assuming any of this matters to them. The faces on the covers have changed, but the information hasn't since any ...
Sunny gets to decide where he feels most comfortable around people. One of the reasons I go on like a broken record about the importance of using reward based training methods that have been designed based on the evidence available garnered through the study of animal behavior and research is because working with fearful dogs can be so darn challenging. So challenging that ...
There are no secrets to dog training, or weight loss, despite the endless amount of spam trying to sell both. Good dog trainers who understand how to train dogs are like bad poker players grinning like fools and showing their hand with all the aces to the people sitting beside them. We want people to know how to change their dog's behavior and can't keep ...
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