Category: Dog Behavior & Rehabilitation
My dog is stubborn is a sentiment I hear fairly often. Believing dogs to be willfully disobedient seems to be an easy leap for many of us to make. After all, why wouldn’t our dog listen? Perhaps they just like to be difficult and cause us frustration? I’m certain that from time to time dogs do make an actual judgment to ignore our directives. But I don’t think it is as often as we want to assume. All these years […]
Dog aggression is not a fun topic. I know some dog trainers probably see it as sort of sexy and seem to take a lot of pride in repeating the phrase “I work with aggressive dogs” There has been a good deal of television culture and drama built around the buzz concepts of dog aggression, dogs that bite, and rehabilitation. There is nothing sexy or exciting about it, IMO. It is sad. It breaks my heart a little bit each […]
Dog Obedience : High Expectations Needed Dog obedience is important for both the dog and owner to fully understand. I wanted to share video from a recent training class at That’s My Dog!. Well, truth be told, it is more like a fun outing we do with our clients a few times a month rather than an actual class. We invite our clients to participate in our traveling classes once they have completed the basic introductory course of dog obedience. […]
Remote dog collar training is as much of an art as it is a science. And art is usually about quality not quantity. I know for a fact there aren’t enough quality dog trainers around. That statement is easily represented by the amount of dog problems that are present world-wide. If more people really “got it” in regards to dogs, we just wouldn’t see the issues of aggression, fear, and behavioral instability that we see. “Getting it” means being educated. […]
This past week I’ve been busy teaching my 10 day professional dog trainers course. We are a week into it, and I wanted to share a few reflections. We started the week with 6 students and a variety of dogs to work with. Most of the students brought either their own dog or a clients dog, plus we had several of our training dogs in residence to work with. On day one, none of the dogs were e-collar literate. They […]
Remote Training Collars and Dog Aggression: : It Isn’t All About the Tool This past weekend I hosted a guest speaker at my dog training facility in Dubuque, IA. Chad Mackin joined us to present his Pack To Basics Workshop. We had about 25 professional trainers and a few pet owners join us for 2 days of discussion and hands on work tackling the difficult problem of dog to dog aggression. We had a few interesting cases including Soldier Boy who […]
Tips for Remote Collar Dog Training I spend a lot of time on this blog sharing success stories from people who have used remote collar dog training as part of a balanced training program to rehabilitate their dog. I also spend a fair amount of time expressing my opinions on training in general and talking about what to do if you are thinking about purchasing a remote collar to add to your dog’s training tools. What I try not to do is […]
Stress in dog training, is it necessary or not? Stress in dog training was a topic touched on in one of our conversations on this Facebook page about the Banning of Training Tools . One of the participants there, Mike, had a few words to say so I invited him to share them here on my site. My personal thought is there is a significant difference between stress and distress, and this is what we must be conscience of in our […]
Dog Training with Positive Reinforcement: Reconsidering the Methods The following letter was sent to me from Kaat (pictured above with her dogs, including Blooper) after we exchanged e-mails discussing dog training with positive reinforcement. The main focus of our discussions were some of the petitions to ban e-collars and a video clip I have on YouTube that demonstrates using a remote training collar to work with a dog that is having aggression issues. I’m posting the e-mail in it’s entirety because […]
Libby Davies, MP Vancouver East is supporting this ban shock collars petition and presenting to parliament. I have a question for you Ms. Davies and the 1400 who signed this petition…can you please explain your decision to Cindy who has MS and has already tried 3 other trainers and just about gave up on her dog before she found a humane and effective solution with a remote dog training collar. Granted, I understand