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People Skills for Dog Trainers

Being a dog trainer is great. I love training dogs. But, I also love teaching people. Being a dog trainer requires a huge and unique set of skills. First, you must be adept at recognizing and understanding canine behavior. Then, you need to develop the manual skills to teach that non- verbal ...

Defining Empathy

Over the last decade there has been an increasing awareness of the need to think, and act, empathically within healthcare settings; this information could be very useful for us. Helen Reiss MD of Harvard Medical School reports a variety of benefits to both patients and clinicians by ...

The Mad Hatter

  As a dog trainer, I wear my “professional hat” when I patiently educate my clients to help them resolve their dog’s behavioral issues. The joke is that when I get home, the last thing I want to do is start training my own dogs. I think the saying, “The cobbler’s children have no ...

Please Go Away: Dog Body Language Study

One of the things I am very grateful for in my life with dogs is that my current three get along. They don’t adore each other, but two of them, Clara and Zani, actually play together and are comfortable in each other’s space bubbles. Zani helped “bring up” Clara, even though Clara got pretty ...

Pet Professional Guild New Advocacy Videos

Advocacy Videos 1. Calling Veterinarians & Pet Professionals. Let's Work Together!   2. A Call For Change. Say No To Prong and Choke Collars!     Checkout the link to our PPG Advocacy Page. Click here

Get Healthy, Get a Dog

I was excited when I read about Get Healthy, Get a Dog, a new report from the Harvard Medical School that describes the connections between life with a dog (or dogs) and better health. The article I read was very enthusiastic, and I immediately purchased a copy of the report, a collaboration ...

Pet Professionals: Keeping It Objective

A dog’s behavior can many times cause the owner to experience feelings of embarrassment or even failure. Such feelings can be detrimental in the trainer/behavior consultant-client relationship and can certainly adversely affect the outcome of any training protocols that are put into place. ...

What Does Citronella Really Do to a Dog?

My 'Paws for Thoughts' blogs are just what they say - thoughts. I don't profess to be an expert on my subject matter or feel that we should believe everything we read, but it should always make one think. This train of thought started with an email I received the other morning from a man ...