by Cecelia Sumner | Oct 8, 2015 | Current Events
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...
by PPGWorld | Oct 7, 2015 | Business & Consulting
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...
by PPGWorld | Oct 4, 2015 | Animal Behavior, Learning Theory, Training
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...
by Eileen Anderson | Oct 2, 2015 | Training
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...
by PPGWorld | Sep 25, 2015 | Advocacy
National Puppy Mill Awareness Day falls on September 27, 2015 and the Pet Professional Guild (PPG) has partnered with renowned dog trainer, television personality and PPG Special Counsel member, Victoria Stilwell, in an effort to highlight the plight of millions...
by PPGWorld | Sep 25, 2015 | Animal Behavior, Pet Guardians
As science sheds more light on the popular game of “fetch”, it is fascinating to learn that “fetch” may not always be that “fetching” after all for some dogs. Stressed dogs in particular may take longer to recover if they …
by PPGWorld | Sep 23, 2015 | Pet Guardians
Many households are on a tight budget when it comes to things like food and health care costs, while the same can be true for our four-legged family members. While we do treat our companion animals like family, sometimes the …
by Louise Stapleton-Frappell | Sep 21, 2015 | Training
Stop press! Have you heard? You don’t need to be a military commander to train a dog! You don’t need to yell or shout. You don’t need to use threats or physical punishment. You don’t need to know a single …
by Daniel Antolec | Sep 15, 2015 | Advocacy, Pet Guardians, Training
As a professional force-free dog trainer I often hear dog owners use the term “punishment” and understand it from their perspective as a word in common use. Webster’s dictionary: 1 the act of punishing; 2 a. a suffering of pain...
by Eileen Anderson | Sep 14, 2015 | Training
What happens when someone shares a “success” story about training with aversives? Here’s my response to a commenter who did so on one of my previous posts. A Parable Once there was a woman named Reva who had a serious...