Blog - Part 2

It’s ALL Tricks To Your Dog

Bob was recently on WGLT with Laura Kennedy on "Animal House" to talk about the best way to train your dog to do fun tricks and good manners. Listen here. And watch the video of Bob and Daisy demonstrating some of her tricks! ... continue reading...

Winter Exercise Tips

It’s Cold - Keep Moving! As I mention often to my clients, one of my favorite training proverbs says, “A tired dog is a well behaved dog.” Conversely, a dog who is bored and bustling with pent up energy is a problem waiting to happen. Exercising our dogs can be challenging when it’s too cold to get outside for your usual games of fetch, playing at the dog park, or going for a long walk. So here are some ideas we use with our energetic Labrador during the winter. First, STOP feeding from ... continue reading...

Dominant – NOT!

“He thinks he’s alpha.” “We have to establish the dog’s rank in our family.” Let me persuade you what scientists have known for a while – it just ain’t so! No misunderstanding harms our relationship with our dogs more than “dominance theory.” Poorly done research in the mid-20th century mistakenly concluded that wolves fight to establish a pack-leader who rules with an iron paw. In the last few decades, much better science has shown wolves live as families - with parents leading based on ... continue reading...

Building Better Behavior

Here are two keys for helping your best friend be a well-behaved member of the family – management and exercise. Management – One of the most important behavior strategies is management - setting up the environment so that desirable behaviors are easy and problem behaviors are inaccessible. Whether as puppies or adults, dogs don’t arrive knowing the rules for living in your house – they need to learn what’s okay and what’s off limits. Baby gates, play pens, closed doors, tethers, leashes ... continue reading...

Pretty Tricky

Want to have a better-trained best friend? Want to have more fun with your dog? (Duh!) Here’s a big step in the right direction – approach all training as if you're teaching a fun trick. This is obvious for behaviors like “sit pretty” (up on her haunches), jumping through a hoop, or rolling over. It’s less obvious for behaviors like walking nicely on a leash, coming when called, or settling quietly inside a crate. Maybe this is because old-fashioned training still goads us to coerce our dogs ... continue reading...

Puppy Two-Step

Life with dogs is an adventure - that we share our lives so successfully with another species is amazing. Like any relationship, friendship with a dog calls for trust, good communication, self-control, and patience. Yet we humans bear the yeoman’s share of responsibility for ensuring that things smoothly. Most of the clients who hire me to help with behavior problems benefit quickly from two basic steps for raising happy, healthy and well-adjusted dogs. 1 - Management: Dogs have no sense of ... continue reading...

Pretend You Don’t Have a Dog

I work with a lot dogs that have aggression problems. The most common cause of aggression is fear, and one common cause of fear is attention from humans. Why? Sometimes dogs are afraid of human attention because they’ve learned from unfortunate experience that it means they’re likely to be yelled at or hurt. Other times dogs are afraid of human attention because they’re genetically shy, and anyone new/unknown feels threatening. Sometimes it’s both. Either way, if the fear is strong enough, a ... continue reading...