Keeping Your Social Butterfly Social
When my wife I adopted Buddha he was a two-year old Labrador with no training and serious case of separation anxiety, thanks to a puppyhood that was disrupted by misfortune beyond his control. His foster family had just begun working on his SA and suggested that Buddha could become a therapy ...
Accidental Punishment
I charged straight into a positive punishment scenario by accident recently.
I’ve been somewhat in the training doldrums lately, probably because I am putting so much energy into finishing my book. I have several training activities that I fall back on when I don’t have much energy. They ...
The Importance of Socialization for the Young Animal
Humans take years to learn socialization skills. In the process of growing from infant to adulthood, the human takes more than 20 years for his or her brain to fully develop. Yet during this time there is much socialization that is taking place. How different it is for animals that have far ...
How Safe Is It for Your Dog to Jump off Furniture?
As a dog Mom and professional dog trainer, dog safety is always on my mind. It seems every year, I start to question things I've done in the past, as to whether or not it is safe. My current dog, Dexter, is a small breed dog. Ok, so he's double the breed standard, but still is only 27 pounds. ...
The Many Reasons to Look Forward to the PPG Summit
I attended my first professional dog training conference in 2003. I can still remember how excited I was and how much information crowded into my new to dog training brain. It was a wonderful experience that subsequent conferences have never quite matched. This year, I am full of eager ...
How To Bring Empathy into Practice?
Drawing empathy into our training practice is so important.
As positive reinforcement training is involves multiple choices (such do we shape, capture or lure this behavior? What sort of reward should we choose; food or something else? What is our secondary reinforcer going to be – a ...
A Freddie Moment
Freddie passed away on October 4, 2014. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and all that he meant to me in his brief life. He changed my world significantly since our first meeting at the adoption fair, and without him, I never would have discovered the joy in helping other people and ...
Sink or Swim: Eight Ways You Might Be Flooding Your Dog
Thank you to Marge Rogers, Debbie Jacobs, and Randi Rossman for discussions regarding this post. The point of view expressed and any mistakes are solely my own.
The journey of becoming a positive reinforcement-based trainer sometimes seems like an endless stream of goodbyes to methods I once ...