Dog Training For Real Life
Many people ask me why I charge so much for training when there are so many dogs out there that need help. Here’s my answer: much like the speech on the airplane, “Put your mask on before you help others.” In order to provide your dog with the best training possible, I need to be …
Dear sir, This letter has been written so many times and I’m hoping someday you’ll hear the plea of those of us who have to write these letters. Today, you decided to play fetch with your dog off leash after seeing me and my dog were in the vicinity and my dog was on a …
Today has been a day and I feel like I need to write this. I get emotional calls from dog owners all the time, some from clients and some from desperate dog owners just looking for someone to talk to. This call was not unlike others I have gotten from a person dealing with a …
Ivan Balabanov, one of the pillars in the dog training community has said several times on his podcast: Training Without Conflict Podcast something along the lines of: If people were to see me with my dogs, they’d think I need a dog trainer. As a dog trainer I felt this. My dogs get trained on …
Yesterday I got Lucifer, my year old German Shepherd, evaluated for protection sports and he failed. Pretty epically. He was the most uncomfortable I’d ever seen him and I won’t lie, I spent a good amount of time mulling over what I had done wrong as his owner and trainer. The reality of the situation …
My German Shepherd puppy goes with me most places dogs are allowed and I always get asked if I adopted him or went to a breeder. Based on the title of this blog, you already know the answer, and I feel it’s my duty as a dog professional to answer the unasked, “why?” I only …
Training, just like all other skills in life must be maintained. You can spend all the money you want on dog trainers and training tools but if you stop implementing those skills they will deteriorate. Most dogs get to a point where they’re pretty much self reliant, they let you know when they need to …
I’ve been seeing this a lot lately and as they say, write what you know, so here we go. We don’t get to decide what our dogs are motivated by. We can encourage and discourage certain things, but ultimately the dog decides what makes it happy. I’m going to go through food drive and what …
More dogs are lost on the 4th of July than any other day. Why? Because most dogs only hear fireworks once or twice a year and they’re scary. Most of the time, the dog has no prior experience with fireworks or anything similar and it’s first experience is terrible. So, how do we help it? …