The Dog Trainer QDT

Bob had the opportunity to be the “guest host” for the Dog Trainer’s Quick and Dirty Tips this – here’s a link you can listen in to (and read the text of the episode).

And here is the video that was referenced of Daisy doing her “sneak up on it” trick. Way to go Bob and Daisy! And thanks to “The Dog Trainer” herself, Jolanta Benal, for giving Bob this opportunity.

Daisy has C.L.A.S.S.

Our little Miss Daisy, age 13 months, has been keeping us very busy with her Canine Life and Social Skills (C.L.A.S.S.) training the past few months.

“C.L.A.S.S., or Canine Life and Social Skills, is an educational program to promote training focused on the use of positive reinforcement and to strengthen relationships between humans and their canine companions. C.L.A.S.S. is a three-level evaluation for dog owners to demonstrate the real-life skills of their dogs, as well as a knowledge assessment of the owners’ understanding of basic dog handling and care.” You can find out more about it on the web site:  http://www.mydoghasclass.com/

In December 2011 she got her Bachelor’s Degree, with Honors.

And yesterday, three months later to the day, she got her Master’s Degree, also with Honors. She’s a genius, I tell you!

Next up – her Ph.D.! Then we’ll be calling her Dr. Daisy.

Management and Exercise

Here are two keys to helping your best friend become a well behaved member of the family – Management and Exercise.

Management – One of the most important strategies in training your dog is management. This means setting up the environment to make correct behaviors easy and incorrect behaviors difficult or impossible. Whether as puppies or newly adopted adults, dogs don’t come knowing the rules for living in your house – they need to be gently and carefully taught what’s okay and what’s off limits.

Baby gates, play pens, closed doors, tethers, leashes and harnesses all help to keep your dog where you want her and prevent her from making mistakes. A dog can’t chew, dig, jump on, or eat what she can’t reach. While your dog is safely confined, providing appropriate chewies and food toys helps build and strengthen those behaviors into good habits. While she’s being carefully supervised, play games that reward sitting, coming when called, staying in place and so forth start to build habits out of those behaviors. All the while, your pup is too busy paying attention to you or excavating food from her toys to go off and dig up the carpet or gnaw on your grandmother’s first print edition of “Jane Eyre.”

Exercise – One of my favorite training proverbs says, “A tired dog makes a happy owner.” Another variation says, “A tired dog is a well behaved dog.” Both point to the [Read more...]

To the Dogs – 2

Tux After session 2…

Hi Tux –

Great seeing you again yesterday. I’m impressed with how quickly you take to your lessons. Small dog = big smarts – keep up the fine work! Here are a couple of thoughts to remind your mom…

Management is a huge part of the overall strategy for influencing your behavior. It’s WAY easier to prevent a problem (episode or habit) than it is to fix it after it’s happened. Crates and gates, gentle walking equipment, decisions about when and where to walk, getting cooperation from visitors, being assertive with passersby about greeting permission and rituals, putting food away, closing the toilet seat, limiting feline proximity while you’re working your Kong, all these and many more are major strategies make the training part easier. The goal is to set up the world so that the right thing to do is the easiest thing to do(as well as the tastiest and most fun), and the wrong things to do are inaccessible, and pointless when you do get to try them. Habits build around what’s possible as well as what’s reinforced.

For both of the new behavior games we learned, you did great. [Read more...]

To the Dogs – 1

This series of blog entries features excerpts from letters to dogs I’ve trained, explaining some of the ideas I shared with their families during sessions in their homes.  Names were changed to protect the innocent.

Tux - After session 1… 

Hello Tux -

Congratulations on the really nice work you’re doing with your new mom! If my training friends knew I have a client who started a training log all on her own, they’d be very jealous.

Please tell your mom a few things to help her along in your training…

First, keep up the good sense of humor. Training is pretty simple to understand, but not always so easy to do. If she can laugh at mistakes, it will ward of frustration for both of you. Nothing makes training go better than having fun at it. You dogs have the idea already, as puppies you play to learn the important things you’ll need later in life. Nice! [Read more...]

Bob on WJBC today

Bob was invited back to visit with Susan Almeida on “The Broad View” this morning on WJBC radio.  He talked a little about “debunking dominance,” and took a few calls.

If you click the “play” button on the video, you can hear the interview (the video is just of our logo).  Enjoy!

 

Great Expectations

After a gap in my volunteer schedule for the past month, yesterday I got back into the routine training dogs at the local shelter. Jen – the talented staff member in charge of animal care for the shelter – asked me to work with four different dogs, each with his/her own issue. Changing names to protect the innocent, there is Lily (fearful of new experience), Tess (very aggressive toward other dogs), Oscar (frenetic with a short attention span), and Roxy (gravitationally challenged with poor mouth manners).

"Lily" is a beautiful, shy girl.

Training went smoothly for the first 45 minutes, as Lily, Tess, and Oscar all responded nicely to positive reinforcement. I know several of the staff and volunteers have good skills with clicker training, and it showed. The first three dogs I worked with responded nicely to cues for sits and downs, paying attention, and at least a bit of polite leash walking. Where behaviors were incomplete or awkward, they improved noticeably with luring and shaping. They had the additional advantage during my sessions of a low distraction environment and high value treats (factors not easily available for exercise and feeding routines at the shelter). I was very pleased, enjoying the dogs’ participation and my opportunity to practice clicker skills. [Read more...]

Slow and Steady

Bob’s “slow and steady” attention training with Squid at his Peaceable Paws Behavior Modification internship earlier this month was the featured story in this week’s episode of The Dog Trainer – Quick and Dirty Tips by our friend and colleague, Jolanta Benal.  You can read the article via the link, or listen to the podcast, or both!

And here is a fun video of Squid in Central Park (NYC) with his new owner and trainer.

Thunder Phobia

Spring is in full swing here in Central Illinois, and with it comes thunderstorms.  Some of our best friends do fine during tumultuous weather, while others are extremely terrified by the first crack of thunder, flash of lightening, and everything else associated with spring storms.

There are no simple fixes for this phobia, but there are some things you can do to help your dog.  Below you’ll find links to two excellent articles on the subject written by Patricia McConnell and Jolanta Benal.

Thunder Phobia in Dogs by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.

Dogs and Thunderstorms by Jolanta Benal, CPDT – KA

Our Kayla has developed quite a fear of thunderstorms as she has gotten older, and we have found a combination of strategies work best to calm her.

[Read more...]

Bob on the radio (again)

Thank you to Susan Almeida and WJBC Radio for inviting me back to “The Broad View” today — I enjoyed taking calls from local dog owners and, as always, my conversations with Susan about our best friends.  I look forward to being on the show again in the near future, and will keep you posted the next time I’m on the air.

Didn’t get to hear me live? You can listen via the link below.

Bob on WJBC April 9, 2011.