No results found.
Latest Training Articles
Phoenix Blog Competition: Blake’s Story – Adopting a Prison Program Dog
By Rhonda York
One of the many things I get to do as a dog trainer is train inmates at the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas in tandem with the Leavenworth County Humane Society.
It helps both the residents and dogs and we work together to train the dogs in the program to have ...
Preventing Resource Guarding in Dogs
Resource guarding is a dog’s natural tendency to protect valued possessions such as food, toys or resting locations. From a dog’s perspective, the approach of a person or animal is a potential threat to losing the valued possession. The behavior reflects a lack of trust and a fear of ...
More Articles
Does Your Dog Think You’re Management Material?
When you hear the word management, I bet you aren’t thinking about your dog. But I and many of my training colleagues work hard every day to change that. Most people think of management as planning, organizing, leading and directing. Every ...
The Power of Project Trade
When I first learned of the Pet Professional Guild (PPG) I had just recently worked with a handsome little elderly dog named Pete and acquired my first shock collar.
Rough handling turned Pete into a hand-biter; adding a shock collar made it ...
Breed Specific Legislation: No Evidence that It Works
The following is an excerpt from PPG's recently released Position Statement on Breed Specific Legislation.
BSL can and does result in the destruction of dogs. Research, however, would suggest that there is no evidence to support claims that ...
Are You Really Performing Classical Counterconditioning?
What do the following training descriptions have in common?
“My dog’s afraid of strangers. But when she stops barking and makes eye contact with me, I give her a treat.”
“I hold her foot. Then I give her a treat after I clip each toenail, as ...
What’s Breed Got to Do with It?
The following is an excerpt from PPG's recently released Position Statement on Breed Specific Legislation.
The Pet Professional Guild (PPG) is becoming increasingly alarmed at the number of dogs being seized or banned in a variety of ...
Do Dogs Have a Right to Say NO?
Aren’t dogs supposed to do as they are told and follow so-called "commands?" They are just dogs after all. Interestingly enough, only about 20 years ago we took no for a no and children who approached dogs when they were sleeping or eating were ...
That Tickles!
Many, many years ago I enrolled in what seemed like a fun weekend workshop with my dog. The ad read, “No limits to learning” or something similar, so of course, I jumped at the chance to attend with my dog. As we sat in the small room with ...
Relationship Is Its Own Reward
A cardinal rule in education, dog training, anything where one person is trying to affect another's (person's or dog's) behavior is that the trainee determines what the reward or motivator is. If I am not interested in food, I am not going to ...