A Walk A Day Keeps Problems Away – There is a lot of truth in this.  Does your dog have behavioral problems? Can You fix them? The truth is no. Dogs are living animals who have emotional responses to stress – like humans. You cannot promise that ‘any dog’ will never react. What you can do is ‘stack the deck’ in your favor and teach a dog coping skills so that it can manage stress….   Continue

The term reactive dog is a recent term in the dog world. Older terms included nervous, fearful, aggressive, leash aggression, or dog aggressive. Reactive dogs were ‘washed out’ of training programs, and very often were rehomed, or worse. Trainers didn’t understand the problem, and were unable to create a solution. Positive reinforcement trainers are making strong progress creating solutions for reactive problems, but there is still room for improvement. Some positive trends fail to address…   Continue

The crib note series are designed to help you understand the basic terms and offer explanations designed to help dog owners understand the theories and practices behind positive dog training. Hopefully these quick reference words will help explain some of the more indepth information available to pet owners and novice sport dog trainers. It is important to understand that everything you do reinforces a dog’s behavior, good or bad. Even when you are watching TV, and ignoring…   Continue

These are some brief crib notes that might help you understand some of the terminology used by today’s sport dog trainers. Dogs are motivated by the desire to acquire something. This can be used to train a dog. Classical conditioning works with your dog’s natural behavior to create responses that generates a specific behavior from a dog. This is an involuntary reaction. If a dog sees a competition ring, or rally signs, and has always…   Continue

Engagement is a big part of both sport dog training and behavior modification. I’m currently training a mobility service dog. She picked up everything quickly at 6 months old and was already doing public access work in a mall. Three months later she wants to play and is trying to start a battle of wills. Understand Your Dog’s Motives The first thing to realize is that she is not being stubborn, or trying to dominate…   Continue