Ty the Dog Guy on the Daily: Recent Episodes
Ty Brown
Ty the Dog Guy on the Daily is a 5 day per week podcast with celebrity dog trainer Ty Brown. Ty takes your questions, teaches about dog training topics, and sometimes even goes on rants to teach you the ins and outs of dog behavior and raising puppies.
Owners frequently call us to say: “My dog is amazing, but he has one problem!” That problem might be something comparatively small, or it might be something bigger. It’s always bizarre to hear someone say “My dog’s perfect except for the fact that he attacks other dogs.”
Let’s dig deep into this. A dog’s nervous system controls its ability to process stress. Fear, anxiety, and aggression all come from a place of stress. Your dog’s nervous system dictates how well he or she will press that stress. A strong nervous system can handle a lot of stress, while a weak one can only handle stress for a shorter period of time.
Summer is on its way, and that means that everyone is going to be at the park with their dog. We’re going to be camping, hiking, and fishing . It’s fun to take our dogs along too!
Many people want to take their dogs on these adventures off-leash, and unfortunately most of these people shouldn’t. Have you ever been out in public and had a dog run right up to you? Usually the owner is calling out “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” That doesn't matter. What if I were terrified of dogs or allergic to them? What if my dog wasn’t friendly?
The message I want to convey boils down to this: leave dogs alone when you’re in public! When you see a dog, especially a service dog, just leave it alone. I know that’s tough for a lot of people. I probably don’t understand this urge to interact with dogs, because I’m surrounded by dozens of them every day and usually fulfill my “dog quota” with no problem. But there is nothing more frustrating to a service dog’s trainer or handler than to be out in public teaching the dog and be constantly interrupted by folks who just want to chat.
Someone called into our Salt Lake City training center to ask me to come to their home and house train their dog. As I explained that we only train at the center, I realized that going to the house wouldn't even be necessary. In fact, I’ve house trained hundreds of dogs without ever once seeing the houses they lived in.
I have plenty of clients with dogs that are big and cute. Some of these dogs also, unfortunately, have aggression issues. Frequently the owner will be walking their dog on the street and have to deal with a difficult situation: a neighbor sees the dog, lights up with a smile, and runs across the road to get in the dog’s face and say hello.
Right now, it’s starting to feel a little bit like spring in Utah. It seemed like winter lasted forever! We had two inches of snow down here in the valley last week, and there’s still snow on the mountains. Utah Sometimes it feels like winter ends in May and spring only lasts a month until we’re into summer.
In this post, I want to ask you to do something. You don’t need to do it right now, especially if you're at school or in your office or at another public place. (In fact, if that’s the case, please save this task for later!) The next time you're getting dressed, put your pants on the other way: if you're used to putting in your left leg first, then try to put in your right leg and then your left.
This post might be out to burst your bubble, because in it I want to talk about selective hearing. Here’s why what I’m about to say might disappoint you: dogs don't have selective hearing in quite the way you think they do. Selective hearing is what most people blame when they say things like: “Sometimes I call my dog and he looks around and thinks about it, but decides not to come” or “I tell my dog to sit, but he’s pretty selective about whether he obeys.”
I love summer. I love not worrying about wearing shoes. I love leaving the house in shorts and no jacket without worrying about getting cold. I hate the rain and the snow and anything falling out of the sky. (Why do I live in Utah, you’re probably asking!) So the rain we’ve been getting recently has really dragged on me, but there is a bit of a silver lining.
In today’s post, I want to address the topic of weakness. Now, we like to believe that we’ve evolved to a level where we don't pick on the weak, at least as adults. As an adult, I know that . As a kid, I definitely picked on those who were weaker at times and got picked on for being weaker at others. But as we mature, we like to think that we’re beyond that. Hopefully we are!
In this post, I want to address what dog training really is. I have a very linear mindset, and I’m always trying to fit things into a logical, “A-to-B” framework. When I do reduce dog training to its core, I come up with one concept: controlling outcomes. If you can manage that for a long enough time, then you’ve trained your dog.
In this post, I want to address some of the challenges of the electric training collar. Those of you who know a little about my company know that we use these collars with most of our clients. We do this because, done correctly, the collar allows us to get to an advanced level of off-leash obedience quickly, while being very humane and easy on both the dog and the owner.
In this post, I want to talk about insurance. The other day, I started to think about investing in dog training kind of reminds me of the way that people . When I say “investing,” I am talking partially about money, but I’m also talking about effort and time and engagement—everything that goes into the process of training a dog.
When I was sixteen years old, I got my driver’s license. Like plenty of other sixteen-year-olds, that meant that I started ditching school and doing other stuff. I was determined to find fun stuff to do. On one of these days, I ditched school with a friend to check out the military surplus store, one of those places where you can buy tents and fishing supplies and other military supplies. We didn’t have one of them in our town, but the next town over—Livermore—did.
I went over to the house and put together a big list of what I wanted them to do regularly. I wanted them to sneak up on him and correct him with the e-collar anytime they saw him chewing, to make sure he had plenty of toys to chew on, to create something called a surrogate (which I’ll address in another post.) The last thing I told them to do was take him on focused walks. They were already walking him every day for 30—40 minutes, but he pulled. We taught him how to walk properly in that session, and I made sure they understood to walk him in a focused manner—right next to their side—from that point on.
In today’s post, I’d like to talk about our expectations for our dogs. We train a lot of service dogs, but this advice applies to any dog. Many people say that they want their dog to watch over them or their kids. When I ask them what this specifically means, they say that they want their dog to “keep them safe.” What does that mean? “Just make sure that we don’t get hurt.”
In this short post, I’d like to talk specifically to people who treat their dogs as if they’re kids. Now, I love both my dogs and my kids. Sometimes even I feel that I love my dogs as much as my kids. But even if you do, there has to be a distinction drawn between them. The reason? Knives.
Right now I’m in Savannah, Georgia for my bother’s wedding. I never bring a razor with me when I travel, so I really needed to shave and my hair was getting long. Now, I’ve been shaving my head by myself for about twenty years. I’m a pretty utilitarian guy. I wear Carhartt shirts every day and try to keep everything simple without fuss or maintenance, so I hadn’t been in a barber’s chair in twenty years.
In this post, I’d like to share a few of my thoughts about dominance. There is a preconception out there among dog trainers that dominance doesn’t exist, founded on the idea that dogs aren’t actually pack animals (which may or may not be true). This idea has gained a lot of traction during the last few years.
It’s gorgeous here in Utah—75 degrees, clear sky, no wind—and easily the nicest day we’ve had all year. Up in the Northeast, though, they have a huge storm coming in. Some places are getting upwards of three feet of snow.
It’s Saturday evening. I’m dirty, sore, tired—and fulfilled! That’s unusual. If you know me at all, you know that I despise manual labor. I always joke that I’m the hardest working lazy man you’ll ever meet. I don’t mind getting a leash in my hand and working with dogs, but other manual tasks like mowing the lawn and fixing stuff around the house just aren’t my cup of tea. But that’s what I’ve been doing all day.
I opened up my email today and saw a question from a person looking for advice. “My dog is six months old and he’s starting to get aggressive. Do you think he’ll grow out of it?” My very frank response was “No, he’ll probably grow into it.” My experience suggests that he’ll start to do it more frequently.
One thing I’m fond of telling people is that calmness is a skill set. A big pet peeve of mine is when people say: “Oh, just wait until the dog gets older. He’ll calm down.” What they’re saying is that calmness is a product of age, and that a dog just needs to get older to naturally calm down. There are two problems with this logic, the first being that it’s just wrong. Plenty of ten-year-old dogs are still very hyper.However, even if this logic is correct, it means that you have to wait years to really enjoy your dog. That’s why I try to help people understand that calmness is a skill, and that it can be learned and taught.
A few years ago I had a client with a Doberman. We were talking about training and commands, and I gave it a “sit” command in English. They said, “Oh no, we’re going to train the dog in German.” I’ve trained hundreds of dogs in German over the years, so I had no problem with that. But when I asked them why they wanted to train in German, they just said “Well, she’s a Doberman.” By their tone of voice I could tell that they were surprised I was even asking. “She’s from Germany originally,” they told me, “which means she’ll understand German commands better naturally.”
I’ve been teaching dogs to heel on the left for twenty years, and if a dog is trained on the right I get awkward. I always joke that you get used to putting your pants on with the same leg first every single day. Try doing it the other way tomorrow! It feels weird. For me, that’s the same feeling I get when a dog heels to the right side.
In this post, I’d like to talk about the role that exercise plays in making sure your dog is well-trained. This stems from a question that I’ve received a lot over the years, thanks to a certain dog trainer named Cesar Milan.
Today I want to talk about dogs that take advantage of their owners. This has been on my mind because I’m working with an owner who has cancer and is physically weakened as a result. In a possible correlation, he’s seen behavior problems and boundary-pushing popping up in his dog.
Today, I spent some time in my backyard with my dog Chocolate Chip and a Belgian Malamute who’s staying at my house to be trained as a personal protection dog. Needless to say, there was a lot of growling involved. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about growling and what it means.
I’ve found that among dog trainers, as in any skill-based profession, there are a lot of disagreements. This arguments tend to revolve around methodology and identification of problems. Some trainers are adamant that one training method is the best, while others will swear that another is ideal. I’ve realized in the past few years that if a dog trainer is trying to achieve a certain goal with a dog, then the training program that they put together toward that goal is probably the correct one.
Lately I’ve been working a lot with Sword, a protection dog in training. Protection dogs are a big investment, usually around $20,000 to $50,000.
Today we were working on Sword’s sit command. He often understands this command to mean sitting at someone’s side, but right now I want to train him to sit in front of me. Right now he gets confused and tries to sit at my side, so I’m teaching him to sit where I ask him to sit.
I want to talk to for a minute your about how your dog’s breed learns. Very frequently, dog owners will ask me, “Have you ever dealt with this breed before?” Sometimes I chuckle when it’s a very common breed. You’d be surprised at how many people have asked me if I’ve ever trained a German Shepherd, for instance. My response? “Well, not since twenty minutes ago!”
I flew back to Georgia last Thursday to buy some service and protection dogs for my clients. The trip was planned with very short notice. Now, I’m a planner who likes to plan things with as much notice as is possible, partially because I’m a big guy who likes to sit in an aisle or window seat. What I never, ever want is the middle seat.
training is just one component of your dog’s overall behavior. It might be the most important component at some times, but it isn’t always. I’ve never made an exhaustive list of every component that I can think of, but you need to consider things like nutrition, exercise, relationship with the owner, supervision, and the amount of affection the dog is getting. Some of these things are directly related to training quite a bit; the better a dog walks on a leash, for example, the easier it is to exercise them.
Today I’m going to talk about your dog playing you for a fool. It happens all the time, and there are a lot of dogs that are smart enough for it. Experts say that 90% of communication is nonverbal, and I totally believe that to be true. I think we as people learn nonverbal cues from others, and we don’t often recognize it. That’s still a big part of how we communicate. Dogs are the same: most of their communication, and most of their understanding of our communication, is nonverbal. They see patterns within our movements and words and interpret them. That allows us to train them, but it’s also what allows them to play us for fools sometimes.
I was truly fascinated by that. I know not everyone comes from a dog family—in fact, I didn’t come from a dog family—and that not everyone wants to be around dogs. But to meet someone who hadn’t touched a dog in so many years seemed strange and unique to me. Because this client was so allergic and hadn’t been able to be around dogs, she had developed a fear of them. She was from an area that is very dog-friendly, so there were always dogs everywhere. That was scary for her. So she overcome this fear with her dog had been tough. Her puppy was sweet, but very nippy. That just fed her fear even more.
In today’s post, I want to talk about something difficult: your stubborn dog! I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot because Facebook was kind enough to show me a memory of a quote that I shared three or four years ago: “In order for a dog to be considered stubborn, he must first know what the rule is and then actively choose to disobey it. There are very few stubborn dogs in this world, but there are a lot of untrained dogs.”
The other day I heard some barking in my backyard. I live in a very unique neighborhood. In the small block that I live on, there are about fifteen houses. Out of all those houses, my family is the only one that owns dogs. Nowhere else in America will you see fifteen houses in a row, only one of which has a dog! It’s crazy.
I want to talk about leadership. This is one of those concepts that a lot of people realize they need to do better, particularly in relation to their dogs. Unfortunately, some of these people end up practicing that only looks like leadership. Some of them just try to look tougher, some say things in a deeper voice, and some attempt to appear meaner or “more alpha.” These terms that come to mind when people think about leadership.
Today, I’d like to talk about a slightly unusual topic: laser pointers. Around the beginning of my business, I got a call from an owner who had three Boston terriers. They were one of the first clients that I had while working on my own. On the phone, they told me that their dogs chased lights, shadows, and other moving light disturbances. If cars driving down the road cast a shadow, for instance, the dogs would chase after it barking maniacally. When someone opened a door, the dogs would see the reflection on the wall and freak out.
which complaint do I hear the most? “My dog only listens when she wants to.” Oftentimes, people think of this as an issue with their dog. They think it means their dog is stubborn, unmotivated, stupid, or even too smart. But in reality, almost everyone teaches their dog to only be obedient when they feel like it. It usually starts from day one, whether they’ve bought a puppy or adopted an older dog. Let’s say, as an example, that you’ve just brought home your new puppy. You tell him: “Come here, puppy!” Being a curious puppy, he hears someone talking and immediately comes over. Tomorrow, you say the same thing twelve times. The puppy keeps listening, because frankly they’ll come to anything! You could say “zucchini” or “radish” and a puppy would respond to it. But the puppy isn’t really learning anything, other than that it’s a good thing to come when called. You’re just making a noise, and he’s responding to it. What tends to happen is an expansion. Now you say “sit,” “down,” and “stay,” but dogs don’t learn well through being told. They learn through being shown.
In today’s post, I want to talk about a nursery rhyme. An old lady who swallowed a fly, and then a spider to swallow the fly, and then a lizard to swallow the spider, and a bird to swallow the lizard, and a cat to swallow the bird, and a dog to swallow the cat—whew! Basically, this woman didn’t know how to solve the problem, so she kept sending other things out to solve it for her.
Today, I thought I’d write a post about a news item that’s been on my mind lately. If you hadn’t heard, it was recently in the news that the Obama family’s dog bit a teenage girl in the face. The story, as I’ve heard it, is that the girl got in the dog’s face and was trying to kiss it—and he bit her. I don’t ever like to condone a dog biting, but at the same time you can’t condone the behavior of this child.
This morning, I was out with my dog Chocolate Chip, just running around. It’s a cold winter and she’s in heat, so I’m not letting her run around the house and make a mess. During this time I like to let her have some fun, because otherwise she’ll go nuts.
In today’s post, I want to give you a few tips for keeping your dog close. Many clients find themselves using these methods in the front yard, when they’re gardening, chatting with neighbors, or working on their car. You want to be outside and you want your dog to be with you, but you don’t want to tie him down. The dog needs to be able to wander without running off. You can also use this tip when you’re out on the trail and want your dog to hang close without heeling or being on a leash. It comes in handy at picnics and the beach as well, or any situation where you want your dog to stick around without a command.
In today’s post, I want to talk about something that I’ve brushed on before and want to explain in more depth. It’s called the “collateral effect.” The “collateral effect” is a term that I use frequently. It simply refers to the common trend that when we satisfy one need in a dog, other behaviors that we weren’t trying to fix still tend to fall into line.
Today, I’m at home doing some work and trying to get up the nerve to take my dog for a walk in the rain. I hope the weather is better where you are! I thought that while I was waiting around inside I would write up a few blog posts. One topic that comes to mind right now, primarily because I’ve been emailing back and forth with a potential client, is this one: your dog’s friends need to be chosen, not happened upon accidentally.
Yesterday I had to go to the airport to pick up a dog, and it reminded me of my last time there. At the Salt Lake city Airport, if you’ll be gone for a few days and need to park, you insert your credit card to open the gate. You go in and park, and when you leave you put your credit card back in. No tickets, just your card.
In today’s post, I’d like to address the topic of about training as it relates to your dog.
My dad is an awesome guy. For my whole life, he’s been in sales: sales training, leadership training, and helping people in his field succeed. Even when I was a kid, I read business magazines and books and traveled with my dad to leadership and sales capacitation training events.
Don’t get me wrong: I love dogs! However, they can sometimes be real jerks. What we don’t often realize is that we often think this because we’re looking at them from our own perspective.
Spite is one of the most human emotions. When something happens that we don’t like, we often like to punish other people because of this feeling. Here’s an example: if someone does something their spouse hates, their spouse might withhold attention or even intentionally do something they know the person hates out of spite. Our species does this all the time!
I personally like the plastic mold, but some of this decision depends on budget and the size of the dog. If your budget is tight and you can only afford one crate, I would get one of the big wire ones and partition it off. If the budget permits, however, I do prefer the plastic mold. I think dogs feel more comfortable in something that is enclosed and sturdy, more like a den. Plus, plenty of dogs can break the wire mesh crates. When I raise a puppy, they’re in a small plastic crate for a while and then as they get older they move to a larger plastic crate.
My last post was about the proverb “you pet what you get,” and that got me thinking more and more about the affection we give our dogs—enough that I wanted to dedicate another podcast to it. Unfortunately, lots of dog owners approach this topic wrong, and it sets their dog up for some problems.
I want to talk today about an old saying that we have in dog training, which I probably heard for the first time about twenty years ago: “You get what you pet.”
What’s that mean? Well, deep within this phrase there’s a very important lesson to be learned. It’s not talking literally about petting, although that can certainly be a part of things. Rather, it’s wisdom that regards showing affection and attention to your dog.
For my last few posts, I’ve been describing some of the “core behaviors” that are crucial to solid training. These three obedience behaviors can help us manage or solve any dog-related problem we might run into. In my last post I talked about staying when told, and in this one I want to address the last core behavior: walking properly.
In my last post, I discussed the concept of core behaviors: three behaviors which, done well, allow you to manage nearly everything. We’ve already discussed coming when called, so if you missed that one please go back and have a read! Today, I want to talk about how to get your dog to stay when told.
Just like recall, staying when told is critical for a lot of things you need from your dog. Often, when I’m talking with owners for the first time, they tell me that their dog knows all the “tricks”: sit, lie down, shake, roll over. But if your dog doesn't do these things very well, then it’s nothing more just a trick. If you can get your dog to come when called in the living room with a treat in your hand, who cares? It’s not useful! That behavior only matters if your dog will still do it in the front yard with the mailman standing right in front of him.
In today’s post, I want to talk about a very important subject in dog training: core behaviors.
I’ve found over the years that there are three of these “core” behaviors. If a dog does these behaviors, and does them well, then we can manage or solve 95% of the things that bother the owners about that dog’s behavior. Those three behaviors are: coming when called, staying when told, and walking properly. We might achieve these behaviors through various commands, but those three concepts are absolutely critical. With mastery of them, your dog can manage almost anything.
I want to dedicate my next few posts to these core behaviors, because nearly every dog I meet has a merely rudimentary understanding of these behaviors. Perhaps he will come, but not very well. Perhaps he will sit, but not stay. That’s not very useful. When the time comes to apply that obedience to aggression or manners, then the dog won’t behave in the presence of distraction. In this post, I want to discuss things you can do to get your core behaviors down better.
If your dog comes when called reliably, a lot of problems go away. You can call your dog away from the door when someone rings the bell, prevent your dog from barking at the window, and get rid of aggression. This concept is huge! I like to teach two different types of recall: casual and formal. I use two simply because most people tell their dogs to “come” fifty times a day. We say it all the time. That’s fine, but anything we say that often is going to lose some of its meaning. We won’t be reinforcing it all the time, so because it’s used all the time it will become lax. I allow that with my casual recall. Teaching this recall is vey easy: I call the dog, then give him lots of rewards of food and praise. I do this over and over—simple.
But here’s the problem: the casual recall probably won’t be good enough to overcome real problems. Your dog will probably really enjoy coming when called, but when the chips are down you can’t count on that behavior. When the dog has to choose between obeying commands for a treat or chasing the cat, then the dog will usually go after the cat. That situation calls for what I call a “formal recall.”
Today is a blustery, freezing cold day here in Salt Lake City, and I’m out on a trail where I frequently take my dogs off-leash. While there, I came across two Golden Retrievers that belong to a client and who I’ve known since they were brand-new. In fact, one of them was dropped off at my house before I brought him to the owner. So these dogs feel like family. They’re my oldest clients, and like my step-dogs.
In today’s post, I want to talk about cheating. This topic came to my mind when I was with a client earlier today. We’re training a service dog for her teenage daughter, and right now we’re working on a specific service task. Now, their problem isn’t that the training is too hard or that the dog can’t do the task, but that it’s hard to get the daughter to want to practice.
I want to talk to you about Einstein, and about a quote of his that I’m probably paraphrasing and not doing justice. It’s unclear whether he actually said this, to begin with, but it’s a great quote.
It goes something to the effect of this: “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life thinking it’s stupid.”
To start off, I know I haven’t been quite as “daily” as usual lately. There’s a reason for that, and I’ve made it the subject of this post!
For the past week or so, my office manager has been on vacation down in Florida. He’s having a good time, which I’m glad about, but that also means that I’ve been taking over his duties. I’m not very good at administrative things like billing, answering phones, and sending emails—plus, it takes up a lot of my time. I just haven’t had an opportunity to do many of my normal activities.
Frequently, I chat with owners who are just beginning to think about getting their dog trained. One of the most common complaints is that their dog is chewing and peeing on the floor, but the owners don’t want to use a crate. Or perhaps the dog is destructive, but the owners don’t want to walk it for forty-five minutes a day Basically, they want the training, but they don’t want to have to work for it.
In today’s post, I want to address the problems that arise when we do things for ourselves rather than for our dogs. Without intending to offend anyone, I’d like to tell you about a conversation.
Earlier today, I talked with a women who had a Belgian Malinois who was over a year old and very aggressive. Now, if you're at all familiar with the Belgian Malinois, you know that this breed shouldn't be owned by most people. These dogs are amazing; I’m a huge fan of the breed, and I’ve imported many of them from Europe over the years. But the majority of people shouldn't own them, in the same way that sixteen-year-old kids should not own Lamborghinis. These are well-built, amazing machines, but kids don’t have the experience or the ability to handle them correctly. Belgian Malinois are great dogs for protection training and for police and military work, but they’re not really suited for average pet ownership. They’re far too much.
In this post, I’m going to tell you something that will possibly make you angry. It tends to have that effect on people, whether I say it like a jerk or as sweetly as I can. I think that people react in this way because they have an emotional response to things that go against what they like to hear.
Well, here’s that statement: your dog probably doesn't want to protect you.
A lot of people swear up and down that their dog loves them and definitely wants to protect them. In most cases, the first element isn’t under question: dogs tend to love their owner. But you have to see things from the dog’s point of view. Just like you and I, dogs are interested in self-preservation. Humans do a lot of things based on certain moral codes, but might still ignore someone getting mugged in order to avoid danger. Dogs are the same. They’re interested in self-preservation, and because of that they don’t automatically have a desire to protect the people they live with.
Many people say things like: “All right, then explain to me why my dog barks when someone approaches me,” or “Why does my dog bark out the front window at the mailman?” or “Explain why my dog attacked someone on a walk the other day.”
In many cases, these events come about because dogs are territorial. The dog is simply saying “This is my house, and I need to protect it!” That’s a good thing. We want to be able to have control, but I do like a dog that has some territorial urges. My old Rottweiler was incredibly territorial. After being somewhere for ten minutes, he would decide that was his place to protect. When your dog sleeps at the front door or barks at visitors, then, he isn’t trying to protect your family. He’s trying to defends what he views as his territory: the place that he sleeps, lives, and eats. He wants other people to get away from it.
So what’s happening when you’re outside the dog’s “territory” and he still growls at people? In most cases, this is self-preservation. Your dog isn’t telling others to get away from you because he really likes you. It’s probably because he’s insecure about someone approaching, doesn’t see his owner as a leader, and thinks that the situation isn’t being taken care of. He says, “This is now my responsibility,” and growls, barks, or bites. That’s simple self-preservation. The dog doesn't see the person on the other side of the leash as a leader and doesn’t feel safe, so he feels the need to protect himself.
Today, I want to write a little about getting your dog ready for Christmas. In my house, we’ve got the Christmas tree, stockings hung by the chimney with care, and all sorts of other Christmas gear. My wife has a blog that a bunch of people read, and this year a company asked her if they could decorate our house for free if she wrote about it. So we’ve got some awesome decorations.
Every year around Christmas, people run into problems with their dogs. Stockings, packages, trees—they’re all an issue! Dogs will rip up the gifts, pee on the stockings, tear down the tree, and all other sorts of stuff. The solution to this is simple, because it doesn't require a ton of effort to get your dog to behave. Unfortunately, a lot of people change the variables in their home and don't think about their dogs.
Think about the scientific process for a minute. We start with a baseline. If we want to test something, we change a variable and watch how the baseline changes. Most people bring a lot of stuff into their house at Christmastime, which means they’ve changed several variables but haven't put themselves in a position to observe the results. They go about their business without having set up any sort of scenarios to make sure that their dog interacts with their possessions in the proper way. That’s really what socialization is: influencing how our dogs respond to the environment. That environment might include other dogs, people, children, cars, shopping carts—or holiday decorations! Se need to look at this problem scientifically, change our variables, and look at the results.
My dog Honey is celebrating her thirteenth Christmas in our family. I know exactly what to expect from her. I’ve seen her response to decorations in the several homes we’ve lived in over the past thirteen years. Now, the first year I had her, I had to observe her quite a bit. She wanted to get into the packages, so I had to correct that. My other dog, Rocco, wanted to pee on the tree at first (he loved peeing on stuff—who doesn’t?) so I had to correct that. When the dogs respond appropriately, I observe and praise them. Simple as that!
Today I’m on the beach at Turtle Bay in Oahu, Hawaii, staying at a resort while I’m working with a client. I woke up at five o’clock and walked down to the beach to have a morning swim. Those who know me will know that I’m not a great sleeper, so waking up early isn’t a big deal. But going and doing something early is a big deal for me.
Normally I’d just stay in bed and watch a movie, and try to go back to sleep. But I’m here in Hawaii for just a few days, and it’s unbelievably gorgeous here. Yesterday I went bodysurfing and boogie boarding with our client, which I never get to do back in Utah. As a family, we lived in Costa Rica for a time. I took advantage of the beach as often as I could, but now that we’re back in Utah I don't get to do that very often. So here I am waking up at five o’clock and getting down to the beach!
That made me remember a time when dogs were like that for me. This is kind of a confession on my part. When I was a fourteen year old kid, I woke up every morning ready to train my dog or visit the trainer that I worked for. I had tons of desire and energy. Coming here at five in the morning to swim made me realize how awesome my job truly is. I shouldn’t lose that excitement for working with dogs.
Not everyone who reads this blog trains dog for a living. Regardless, being able to train your dog is pretty awesome! It’s about as cool as going to the beach in Hawaii. The opportunity we have to love and be loved by man’s best friend is amazing.
This post isn’t meant to give a lot of how-to information. It’s just me realizing just how cool playing with dogs is, and recommitting myself to it. Whether you do this for a living every day or work with your own treasured best friend, it’s amazing that we can share a world with these dogs we can train and love. Get out there and have some fun with your dog!
Right now I’m in Hawaii working with a client, and I wanted to write a post about what I call the translation period. This is something that’s on my mind today because I’m working with a client here who has a new dog. The dog came to them trained, but I need to work with them for a while and teach them how to handle the dog.
We used to frequently get this question: “If the dog is already trained, then why do you need to show the owner how to do things?” This is a huge red flag in the training industry because there are service dog and protection dog training companies that will ship you your dog with a list of commands. We had someone local to us who had gotten a dog from a company in the Midwest that supposedly worked for seizures. They asked the company what the dog would do when the owner had a seizure. And the company said: “Oh, the dog will figure it out. Don’t worry!” I’ve seen the same when people buy protection dogs from Germany and ask how the dog will protect them. Oftentimes, the company just says that the dog will “know what to do.”
But there’s a difference between a trained dog and a robot. Unfortunately, many people and training companies don’t realize this. That’s why these companies send dogs out with lists of commands and assure new owners that the dogs will “be fine.” That’s not how it is. Dogs are living creatures with their own desires and drives. Just because they’re trained for one person doesn’t mean that they’re trained for another person. Plenty of my dogs have been highly trained, yet other people couldn't get them to listen to a thing. Why would the dog listen to a stranger spouting off commands? That’s because the “translation period” exists.
Even if a dog understands the language of training, it still needs to translate it to a new person. This comes up a lot in our bootcamps, where people bring their dogs for training and then takes them back home, or when we send out protection or service dogs. There’s a period where the dog absolutely understands what its old trainers are saying but the new owners’ tones and mannerisms are different. A dog might know what I mean when I say “heel”—when I walk and talk a certain way and do a certain thing with the leash—but that dog might not understand someone else giving that command.
The translation period occurs when an owner starts to understand the language of training. This is critical. Have you ever seen a news story about a K-9 police officer who gets in trouble because his dog was doing things wrong? Even though that dog is well trained, the officer might not know how to handle him. At the end of the day, the responsibility is on us as trainers and owners to translate the language of training: corrections, praise, motivation, and mannerisms. For a dog, none of these things are natural. Dogs don’t instinctively know how to listen to vocal commands or understand the domesticated world they live in. It’s up to us to translate it for them.
Today I want to talk about something I call a “contextual repetition.” I’ve been thinking about a challenge that some of our clients have, and recently came up with that term to refer to it.
A lot of people find that when they start training, they see big results in certain areas. But in other areas, it takes them longer to get the results and sometimes there is a little frustration. Perhaps their dog goes nuts when somebody rings the doorbell, or doesn’t immediately respond to aggression training.
I’ve determined that the challenge lies in contextual repetitions. Let’s say you're teaching your dog to sit. You can teach this command in a few minutes, and you can get repetitions in easily around the house. You can get hundreds in the space of a week! As we all know, repetition is a big key to learning. So your dog might only take a few days or a week to learn “sit” or “lay down” if you work on it all the time.
Yet the person whose dog learned “sit” quickly might become frustrated when someone rings the doorbell and their dog won’t sit. A big problem is that they’ve done all of their repetitions in a context where nothing else is going on and all their dog needs to do is sit down. But it might take months to get enough repetitions of sitting after the doorbell rings if not a lot of people come to your house.
Oftentimes, we have to figure out a way to cheat and get those repetitions in context. In case of the doorbell, you might get your neighborhood kids to knock on the door. If you're dealing with aggression, you might need to find some dogs behind a fence in your neighborhood and work around them. That’s “cheating.” But you need to get those contextual repetitions if you want to solve a problem.
Sometimes a client is doing everything perfectly, and all they need to do in order for their dog to change its behavior is do the training in the correct context. Part of this is state of mind, and being aware. A lot of people get used to grabbing their dog and putting it in the bedroom when someone rings the doorbell. So awareness is key to getting enough repetitions. But having the right methods in that moment can be critical in that moment too, so that you can get your dog to obey.
In today’s blog post, I want to talk about being sick. This past week was Thanksgiving, and on Tuesday we flew out to visit my family in California. It’s a short flight, only about two hours, but I was stressed because we had to wake up at three in the morning. So I didn’t sleep the whole night. I sat up watching movies, afraid that if I fell asleep we would miss our flight. But I’m a thirty-six year old man, so I can’t really skip sleep anymore!
I was exhausted the next day, and then I got on a plane with a ton of recycled air. And when I was at my parent’s house on the guest . Coming back, we had to get up early again to get to the airport in time. On top of everything, I’m working on stressful stuff with the business. A week of not sleeping well, flying twice, and some stress all added up. I started to feel sick, and woke up the next day in bad shape.
This was a series of little events that left me sick. When you get sick, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what happened. Whether it’s a cold or cancer, it can be hard to tell the cause. Sometimes you can point to something like smoking that led to it, but often you can’t. Say that I had spent the last week at home getting plenty of sleep, and had still gotten sick. That’s totally possible. But I believe that my immune system was hurt because of stress, and as a result I got sick with the flu.
Now, I can relate a lot of this to dogs. It’s sometimes tough to exactly pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with a dog. When someone says their dog is behaving badly, we can sometimes point to a specific event. We might be able to say: “The dog was fine, but he went to a dog park and he was bullied, and now he’s not fine.” That does happen, but oftentimes behavior problems—like getting sick—are an accumulation of things in the wrong order. The dog’s owner might be great, but they maybe they weren't walking the dog enough or teaching them about leadership or correction. These aren’t horrible things, but they add up.
Before I begin this post, I’d like to offer the disclaimer that I sincerely hope to not offend anyone. What I’m about to write is simply an observation I’ve made in my work.
Over the years I’ve found that the most experienced “dog people”—whose who train dogs, handle dogs, or simply spend a lot of time with their dogs—have the least amount of “stuff” for their dogs. They don’t have a lot of toys, accessories, and gizmos. I can think of a handful of exceptions, but for the most part people that understand dog behavior don’t buy a billion things for their dog.
That might seem counterintuitive at first, but it can be very important. While speaking with a group of dog trainers at work the other day, I noticed a common thread: phrases like “My dog has hardly toys” or “We barely have any of that!” In general, most of these trainers give their dogs only what they truly need.
Oftentimes, when owners don’t give their dogs the leadership or structure they need, they nevertheless sense that their dog needs more. They have a bond with the dog, and want to be able to give it what it needs. But because they don’t know how to give their dog the right training, they end up giving material things. Now, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with material things such as toys. But when you buy a lot of them, that often means that you’re not providing some other things.
Now, I know that there’s someone reading this who does everything right for their dog and also buys them a bunch of trinkets. However, I’m hoping that some other people identify themselves in this description, and realize that they might be giving their dog material stuff because they aren’t actually providing the right leadership. A dog might have every toy you can buy, treats with his food, treats after his food, treats for when he poops outside, thirty different Halloween costumes, and twenty leashes—but no understanding of right and wrong! That’s not healthy.
As I write this, it’s cloudy and windy and chilly outside, and that means that soon we’ll start getting a certain type of call from some of our clients.
Oftentimes, we train a dog in the spring or summer and have some great results in fixing aggression or house training. But sure enough, come the first cold spell, clients will call us with complaints like these: “My dog hasn’t gone to the bathroom inside in six months, but he just did!” “My dog’s starting to get mean again—what do I do?”
What’s happening here? Well, because it’s cold, dogs are getting less exercise and meaningful stimulation. They might spend more time with their owners because they’re inside, but that’s not all a dog needs. So it’s important to understand some of the things you can do to help your dog.
This is an informal list of things that will help to reign in a dog’s mind and body. I often say that you’ll tire a dog out much more quickly by exercising his brain than you ever will with his body. You can gain a lot of leverage by getting your dog’s mind working.
The first thing you can do is use the treadmill, which we train many dogs for. For some of my clients, it’s imperative to have excess energy burned, especially those that have anxiety issues. I was recently working with a client whose dog really needed a treadmill. So I pulled up Facebook Marketplace—it’s a little button you can click on that shows what people are selling in your neighborhood—and typed in “treadmill.” Sure enough, within 30 miles there were about a hundred treadmills, solid quality, and under $200. There was even a free one near their house! You may not be able to find a treadmill that easily, but I can guarantee that by using your local classifieds, Craigslist, Marketplace, or any of the other new garage sale apps out now, you can find a treadmill. Teach your dog to run on one. It’s cheap, but it can make the difference between good behavior and aggression or destruction for some dogs.
In today’s post, I’d like to address a big mistake that some people make when they’re house training.
One big error I see people make is giving their dog too many opportunities to go to the bathroom. In the very beginning, when I’m house breaking a puppy, I try to give them lots of opportunities to relieve themselves. So I might take them outside to the bathroom every hour or so. But obviously you also want to teach the dog to “hold it.”
This ability is physical, in that there are small muscles that control those bodily functions which need to be developed. But there’s also a mental aspect to it, in that you have to teach your dog to want to hold his bathroom urges. This can happen for a multitude of reasons: the dog wants to be clean, he wants to be rewarded for going outside, or to avoid the correction that cones when he goes inside. Both of these aspects, physical and mental, need to be developed through training and time.
Many owners struggle at first to house train their dogs, and eventually get to the point where they’re taking the dog out to the bathroom every 30-45 minutes. If they break that habit, the dog goes to the bathroom in the house. If they are never forced to hold it, the dog has never developed either the musculature that they need or the desire to do so. They don’t need to hold it in because they go out all the time! There’s no impetus to get better and learn.
How do we get around this? Straight and simple: supervision. If you have a young dog that isn’t house trained, that dog should be either in a crate or on a leash and with you at all times. I always hear clients say: “I supervise my dog all the time,” and then later they reveal that their dog “snuck away” and peed in the house. That’s not supervision! Your dog cannot be able to sneak away, and you need to get on a rough schedule. If I have a four-month-old dog I usually shoot for three or four hours between “potty breaks,” because I don’t want the dog to become dependent on them in order to not go to the bathroom in the house. In fact, I don’t even want the dog to tell me that they need to go to the bathroom. I want them to recognize that I’m fair, and will take them outside with enough frequency that they don't need to go in the house.
Today I want to write a little about service dog failures.This is something that not many people like to talk about it, and I honestly don’t either. Failure isn’t fun to think about or dwell on—but they do a lot to teach. They’re important lessons that help us to understand what constitutes a good situation for a service dog.
We’ve recently been training a lot of service dogs for a variety of situations. Primarily, we’ve been training dogs to deal with PTSD, autism, diabetes, and seizures. Overall, things have gone well. Our dogs have gone on to live in the home, do a good job, and improve their owner’s quality of life 80-90% of the time.
There’s an old saying, however, that 80% of your success comes from 20% of your effort. Though failures constitute only abut 5% of our service dog placements, I would say that in 10-20% of situations there are challenges beyond what we’ve anticipated. The longer I train service dogs, the more I identify the characteristics that go into successful and unsuccessful pairings. Today I want to talk about those characteristics.
The first principle is commitment. This quality leads to the biggest successes and the biggest failures. We drill into people’s heads before adoption, over and over, that the service dog process involves work. Even though the service dogs we send out are trained, a trained dog will become untrained very quickly if certain maintenance isn’t done.
Would you believe me if I told you that your dog lies to you? What if I told you that he lies to your trainer?
In the beginning stages of our training program, owners frequently say things like: “I have no idea what’s going on; my dog does great here, but when we’re at home he doesn’t behave well at all!” Obviously, as people, we look for the most glaring difference between those two situations. In one case, we’re in a training center; in the other, we’re at home. So a lot of people deduce that the training center itself is the problem. But that can’t be the case. There’s no magical quality at a training center that makes a dog automatically obey. There’s nothing about being at the center that makes a dog say, “Oh man, there are dogs everywhere and a ton of distractions around, but I’m supposed to be obedient here…so I guess that’s what I’ll do!” Owners often say that their dogs behave better when their trainers are around, but that’s not exactly accurate either.
So what’s the real issue at hand?
It’s consistency. Before I had a training center, when I worked in people’s homes, owners would tell me that their dogs behaved better when I was around. It became so common that I always joked that people should hire me to come live with them for just $50,000 a month—especially if they had a pool!
In this post, I’m going to be talking specifically about jumping and biting. I’ve spoken about this a few days ago in another post, but I want to address it head-on here.
I just got off the phone with a gentleman who told me: “I’ve got this young dog, and every time the previous owner would give him a toy every time he tried to bite.” This dog is five months old, and now all he does is bite his owner—because he wants to play!
This is a method that is being taught by positive trainers, who usually advocate ignoring bad behavior by trying to get the dog to do something else. Not surprisingly, this method often fails. I often see this among people who say things like: “We’ve been working with a trainer for about six months, but our dog is still jumping, so we’re kind of looking around for different training options.” My response is always to tell people that getting a dog to stop jumping should take six minutes, not six months! Later, I find out that their trainer told them to turn their back every time the dog jumps.
The idea behind both of these methods is that if you ignore your dog’s bad behavior, then it’s no longer fun because he isn’t getting any attention. If your dog bites you and you say “Ouch” to let the dog know that it was painful, that your dog won’t want to hurt you. To me, that’s the biggest joke in dog training. Every puppy wants to wrestle with and “hurt” its owner! It’s fun!
With this post, I want to talk about myths surrounding the topic of dominance.
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of truisms like “You can’t let your dog on the couch,” “You have to eat before your dog,” “You need to make sure your dog moves out of your way when you’re walking, rather than stepping around them,” or “You can’t play tug-of-war with your dog—and you definitely can’t lose.” You’ve probably heard some of these things too.
Many of those tips are actually just myths. If you’re doing the right things with your dogs—establishing a good relationship, teaching obedience, instilling impulse control—then there is a decent chance that inviting your dog onto the couch or losing at tug-of-war is perfectly fine. It’s not wrong to eat before your dog, but there are so many things that are far more right.
We give a social hierarchy checklist that we give for our clients, which outlines things like keeping your dog off the bed and making sure that you walk through doorways first. Those recommendations are absolutely true when they need to be, and there are two specific situations when they need to be true.
The first situation is an owner who isn’t following through on obedience training in the way that they should. They aren’t promoting the correct relationship with their dog, and as a result they need to use these little tips to keep their social hierarchy in the right place: owner as the leader, and dog as a happy follower.
However, some people need this checklist because their dog is, by nature, more dominant than most. “Dominant” is itself kind of an overused buzzword, but in this case it refers to a dog that’s willing to push to get their way. Most living creatures—including dogs—don’t want to upset the balance of a social situation. They realize that if they’re too pushy, things might not go their way. But some dogs are more dominant and will do whatever it takes to get their way. Those kinds of dogs need their owners to follow this checklist: stay off the couch, walk without pulling, wait at doors, don’t jump on people.
In this post, I’d like to tell you about the lie of positive reinforcement. That felt kind of silly and overdramatic to write, but it’s an important topic. Dog training, like any industry, gets very political. People have specific views and wish to teach those views or force them on others. one of these views is the idea of positive reinforcement.
Back in 1994, I started working for a dog trainer. I was just a teenager myself. Up until that point, the overwhelming majority of dog training had been aversive-based, which means that it used a lot of corrections, a certain level of sternness, and certain techniques that not even the toughest dog trainers today would use. But in 1995, we were a few years into a new movement. It went by a lot of different named: Positive Reinforcement Training, R+, Anti-Aversive Training, and others. At the crux of all these philosophies is the idea that we don’t correct the dog. No spray bottles, no training collars. Some even advocate never telling a dog “no.”
Unfortunately, this is all built on a lie.
During the 1990s, dog trainers began to receive inspiration from whale and dolphin training in theme parks. They had been making cool strides in this industry. Of course, you can’t put a collar on a whale, so these trainers were coming up with some very ingenious ways of using positive reinforcement.
Now, I’m a huge proponent of positive reinforcement. It must be an essential element in any training program. That’s non-negotiable. But these wildlife trainers turned dog trainers realized that they could accomplish a lot through positive reinforcement. Sure enough, they were right! this isn’t a revelation to anybody. We all know that we can pull out some hot dogs and teach our dogs to teach basically anything.
I want to talk about Pavlov. Many people remember hearing about Pavlov in school, and some of you even studied him in depth. If you don't know who he is, go do a quick Google search and find out some more about him, because he was a transformative figure in the study of behavioral theory.
Pavlov was a Russian scientist who studied conditioning. He would ring a bell and give a treat, over and over again through a long period of time. This is his most famous experiment, and a good number of people know him for it. What happened? Over time, the sound of the bell became loaded: the sound itself had a lot of meaning to the dogs. If they heard it, they would start to salivate. The sound alone initiated a physical response.
So the joke I always make is this: what if Pavlov had been a jerk? He’s done all this work to make the dogs salivate when they hear the bell. What if he had tried to mess around with them? Imagine that he had rung the bell and then smacked the dog in the face. How many times would he need to do that before the dog started to cower and flinch every time he rang the bell? I don’t know the answer, because I’ve obviously never done this and never will. But I would guess that it wouldn't take too many repetitions for a dog to begin to dislike the sound of the bell, even if they had positive associations with it before.
I’m sharing this hypothetical situation because it helps people realize how quickly dogs can change associations when things are presented in the correct way. This story comes in particularly handy when talking about doorbell manners. Without trying, most people have turned the doorbell into a loaded sound for their dog. Every time the doorbell rings, something of interest appears on the other side. Much like a bell that signals food, a doorbell can create a physical response such as barking or becoming aggressive.
In this post, I want to address dog chewing. This issue is a big deal! I just got out of a session with a nine-month old dog who’s doing an absolutely stellar job in training. He’s trained off-leash, he listens at a high level, and he’s doing public access work to become a service dog. But he’s chewing on things, like pool noodles and bags of groceries. Even though he’s doing very well, this one little thing is really nagging at his owners and I.
So today I’d like to share a simple chewing formula that works well for many dogs, and is working quite well for this particular client. There are a few practices which, if done right, will almost certainly get a dog through a chewing problem.
One of these is supervision. This is the one that most people aren't willing to do. Verbally, they say they’ll do it—but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of actually watching their dog, most people aren't actually willing. It takes a lot of effort. Now, the best way to supervise is to teach good obedience. When your dog is obedient, it becomes easier to supervise her. When you’re making dinner, the dog lies on her bed. When you’re watching TV, she’s in a down stay. When you move to another room, she moves along with you. See how much easier supervision is when your dog actually listens to you?
Today I want to have a conversation about selecting shelter dogs, a topic about which many people have questions. Recently I spoke with someone who wanted to rescue a dog from the shelter and train it to be a therapy dog. They asked for our help, and I told them I could give them some ideas about what to look for in a dog. I’d like to give that same information to you here.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s extensive enough that we can generally use it with success. So I thought I’d share at least a handful of the more important bullet points on that list with you today. Hopefully, if you’re looking to rescue a shelter dog, you’ll find this helpful.
The first thing that you should realize is that you’ll probably want to test several dogs. I hate to say this and come across as mean, but there is a reason why some dogs are in shelters. They might have a problematic nervous system, been neglected, or have negative behaviors. Lots of things can totally prevent a dog from being a therapy or service animal. Not every dog can fulfill those roles—in fact, most dogs can’t! Service positions require a certain set of characteristics that aren't present in every dog, especially when you’re looking for an animal that can perform a specific task. That kind of exclusivity immediately rules out a huge portion of dogs that you’ll see, in a shelter or anywhere else.
If you need a car that can run in a race, you won’t look for a minivan. There’s nothing wrong with a minivan, but it’ll never be a race car. Even if you put in a ton of time and effort into streamlining and modifying it, it will still never race as fast as other vehicles. Why would you put that effort into But unfortunately, that’s what people do with dogs: they reduce the wrong kind of dogs for service or therapy roles. The same could also be said for agility dogs, protection dogs, search and rescue dogs, and more.
What I look for most in a therapy or service dog is confidence. I want a dog that can handle pressure and stress, because those are huge parts of these dogs’ lives. Therapy dogs meet with hundreds of people during their lives. They have to be around medical equipment, strange owners, screaming people, and all sorts of other stressful things. We need a dog that can handle that. So the dog that’s huddled in the corner, frightened of everything? I wouldn't try to train it as a service dog.
Now, if you’re equipped to handle that dog, then by all means rescue it! But don’t expect it to be a therapy or service dog. Many owners will rescue a dog like that out of pity, because they see that it needs a home or responsibility. It’s certainly noble, but the chances of a dog who’s already timid becoming confident enough to become a service or therapy dog are pretty slim. So the first glance at a dog can tell you something about a dog. Certainly not everything, but sometimes enough to make a judgment.
If I see a dog that’s aggressive or fearful, or is backing into a corner or barking at everyone, I automatically won’t take that dog. I want a dog that wants to confidently greet me. When looking for a service dog, I don’t mind a dog that jumps up on me. That can be fixed through training, and it shows the dog has the confidence to greet a stranger. But I don’t want an overly-hyper dog that’s constantly stimulated and can’t calm down. For therapy work, you ideally want a social dog that wants to engage with new people but is also calm.
Your last dog is not your current dog. It might be a dog that you had to give away, or passed away from old age, or a great companion who died too early from cancer. But it isn’t your current dog.
This is a big source of frustration for dog owners, and a big hurdle that prevents them from doing the best for their current dog. Owners will say things like: “I’ve had golden retrievers my whole life, and this is the first time I’ve ever had a problem with one.” How many golden retrievers did that owner have? Probably three or four. What they’re really saying is that they’ve had a few good representatives of the breed and can’t believe that one is showing them difficulty. I’ve heard this with countless breeds over the years, and it’s always a source of shock and frustration.
That attitude becomes a hindrance when owners use it as a reason not to seek out more help, whether that’s hiring a trainer or going to a seminar or investing in a good program. When all you can think is “I’ve never had this problem before,” you hit a mental block. They assume that because they figured things out with their last dog, they’ll be able to handle this new dog on their own.
But in reality, the average dog owner hasn’t had more than six or seven dogs—whereas the average dog trainer might see that many dogs in one day. Trainers see a huge variety of dogs, and have a much larger ability to understand a dog’s issues. Still, plenty of people fool themselves into thinking that they can solve their current dog’s problems simply because they’ve owned a lot of dogs in the past.
Another problem that this mentality creates is that we love our dogs so much that they erase our memories. I mean that quite literally. This conversation occurs all the time: “Our last dog was so amazing! We’re doing the same things with this dog, and he’s just not getting it. Everything is the same, we’re raising him the same way, but our last dog was so much easier.” I often call on the spouse and ask them if this is true. The more logical of the two will say it’s not. Maybe the dog was indeed great, but also had another set of issues.
By the time your last dog was four or five years old, they probably calmed down for another five to eight years. Your memories are of those great times, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes those memories cloud our recollection of what actually happened. Sometimes a husband will tell me that he doesn't think training is necessary, simply because “they figured things out with the last dog.” But when I talk to the wife, she’ll say that the dog just grew out of the problem. That husband is setting himself up to deal with those behavior issues for years and years, until the dog gets too tired to present them any longer.
If you have more than one child, then your second child isn’t the same as your first. Likewise, your current dog isn’t the same as your last dog. Every dog has different needs, wants, desires, and challenges. It isn’t fair to keep applying the same strategies to your current dog that you did to your last dog.
As Einstein said: “You can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created the problem.” (That’s a paraphrase.) Many people are sorely lacking in mindset. They need a new tool bag this time around. So don’t keep living in the past, where the dogs were amazing and brought you breakfast in bed. Live in the here and now, where you’ve got an awesome dog who needs some help. What’s it going to take to help that dog through its behavioral challenges? Probably not the same thing that your last dog needed. Keep that in mind as you train.
In this post, I want to tackle the somewhat controversial topic of dog fights. This subject came up recently because I was chatting with a client about our daycares. We run a daycare, and it’s a little different than most. I was explaining the difference between our daycare and other daycares. They asked what we do in case of a fight, and I realized that we’ve never actually had one. I’m looking for some wood to knock on as I write this, because I know that it’s improbable to expect that we will never see a fight. But as a rule, we don’t see fights in our facility. There’s a reason for that.
I’ve been doing group work for about ten years. Before I had a training facility, I had eight to ten dogs at my house training most of the time. We have had the daycare facility for almost three years. So I’ve been working with a lot of dogs for a few years, and a decent number of dogs for the years previously. In all that time, I’ve never had a full-on fight.
Once or twice, we have had dogs bite at kennel staff. On one occasion, the dog made contact and caused an injury. We’ve also had dogs get into scuffles and skirmishes, but never a true fight. Why is that? There are a few reasons that I’d like to mention, so that you can apply them to your dogs.
For starters, we do a lot of what we call “personality matching.” Basically, we try to understand dogs. If we have a dog with a shy personality or reactivity issues, we don’t place them with an annoying younger dog that loves to get in everyone’s face. If we have two dogs that love to play really hard, we probably won’t put them together either. Personality matching is huge for us.
Many people run into problems because they put any dogs together, whether they’re going to the dog park or visiting a friend or going camping. “Well, dogs are dogs,” they think. Consider that for a second. Why on earth would that work? Can you just throw people together—especially kids—and expect them to play well together? There are always personality conflicts in play that you should be aware of.
We also don’t allow very rough play. When I say “super rough,” I’m talking about behaviors like stomping all over the place, barking like crazy, running in circles as fast as they can, and other things like that. We simply don't allow that. If we did, then the dogs’ adrenaline would shoot up and they would be more prone to bad decisions. A dog that has anxiety issues might run off or become aggressive, whereas a dog that’s confident might get hyper and annoying and hurt someone. Adding adrenaline to a dog’s personality can be a recipe for trouble. Now, there will always be adrenaline in a daycare setting. Dogs will always play and have a good time. But if you prevent that play from escalating, then you can make sure that the dogs don’t even get to the point of thinking about aggression.
The third thing that we do is insist on good behavior outside of play. We don’t let them jump on people, we make them wait at doors, and we don’t allow them to pull on the leash. Plus, we do rotations. At some daycares, dogs play for eight hours straight. People sometimes take their dogs out for playdates where they’re out in the backyard all day. That amount of play is so over-stimulating! Nearly every dog I’ve ever met that spent eight hours a day in full-time daycare has some kind of problems—whether it’s hyperactivity, aggression, or irresponsibility around other dogs.
Instead, we practice something called “cycling.” Our daycare dogs move from play into rest and back into play, usually with walks or other training in between. Doing that is what has enabled us to go for three years with no fights that have sent dogs to the vet. I’m going to make sure that we keep doing everything that we can to make sure these dogs are safe, happy, and healthy. I’d like to keep that good track record for as long as possible. If you can do those four things whenever you’re dealing with dogs in a group, you’ll make huge progress.
If a client comes to me and says: “We’re going camping with our friends, and their dog is out of control.” Keeping your dog separate isn’t fun—but that other dog is running around with knives in his mouth and paws. imagine that you’re going to an event with kids and one of the parents said “We gave our kid a bunch of knives. He’s super irresponsible and badly behaved, but hey, he’s a kid! Shouldn't he be able to play with everybody else?” That would be ridiculous! You wouldn't let your kid around another kid who had knives and zero impulse control.
It’s the same with our dogs. If someone else doesn't have control over their dog, then I will absolutely keep them separate. There is no reason to force a square peg into a round hole, and no reason to force your dog into an unstable interaction. You owe it to your dog to manage situations better than that. Pay attention to those four factors, and you will have success.
My daughter is ten and a half—and she needs braces. As we’ve gone to the dentist over the years, it’s starting to look like all of our other kids will need them too. When I think back to having braces, I remember how awful they were and how much I hated those years. My lips got cut, and I couldn't brush or floss. It was ugly, painful, and just no fun at all. And since I didn’t wear my retainer very well, I actually had to get braces twice! To this day, my bottom teeth are still kind of crooked.
Now, my daughter is going in tomorrow to get braces and we were talking about it last night. She was acting kind of bummed about it because she thought she was supposed to be—but at the same time, she was smiling. “Oh man, I’ve got to go in and get braces on Thursday!” she said. I was up front with her: I told her that braces hurt my teeth and mouth, but that technology had advanced in the past twenty and she’d be in better shape than I was. She knows that this isn’t going to be a pleasant thing, but she was still acting excited. “You’re kind of acting excited,” I said. “No, I’m not!” she replied. But she was.
That’s when I realized that braces meant something else to her. She has a few friends who are eleven and twelve years old, and they’ve had braces. She sees kids at church who are a little bit older and have braces. Her cousins have braces. To her, braces aren’t necessarily tools for fixing teeth: they’re a sign of being older. First you get braces, then you get to babysit, then you get your driver’s license, then you date—and so on. She’s our oldest, and she’s always wanted to feel older and fit in with older kids. For her, getting braces is almost a positive.
I’m guessing that once the braces are on, it’ll be a mixed bag. She will probably still feel that sense of maturity that she’s invested in this process, in addition to hating the pain and discomfort. But right now, she’s honestly looking forward to going to thee orthodontist and getting these braces slapped on her teeth.
A lot of people think that correcting a dog is as simple as telling him “no” in a stern voice. That’s meaningful for some dogs, but not all. Some people think that you can praise any dog just by giving him a treat. That’s not necessarily true. Oftentimes, the standard value that we associate with food or correction is very different for different dogs. It’s important that we as trainers and owners find out what actually makes a motivating correction or reward. This will be different for every dog. But if you can uncover it, you’ll be much closer to your goal of the best-trained dog you can possibly have!
With today’s post, I want to talk about child aggression in dogs. This is a very tough topic. Dog aggression is one of my favorite things to work on, and I’ve developed some processes and techniques that are really world-class. I enjoy it, because there’s a lot of predictability in how you can solve aggression in dogs—whether it’s toward other dogs, or animals, or people.
But dog aggression toward children is probably my least favorite to work on because it’s so much more difficult and the stakes are so much higher. I wanted to talk about that today, give some examples of things I’ve seen and when you shouldn’t even risk it.
The first thing we need to look at is teaching our kids to treat dogs with respect. This is a big deal. I remember a client who had a service dog growling at their kids. We tried to look at the situations from the dog and the kids’ perspective, talking about how the kids treated the dog. “Well, they smack him and they’re rough with him. They lull his tail.” No wonder he was showing some aggression! The owner was under the impression that a service dog should be able to sit down and take anything. But a dog is a living creature. You can’t beat it up and threaten it constantly and expect it to be cool with everything and never defend itself.
Even though this is the most important element in address ion child aggression, it’s also usually second in the parent’s mind. When someone calls us to deal with this problem, we always ask what they’ve done with the kids “Well, I’ve tried,” they say, “but they don't really listen.” How do you think you’ll be able to get a dog to listen, then? Sometimes dogs are easier than kids, but too often people put the onus on the dog. That’s not fair. We need to help our dogs handle pressure and stress, but it’s not fair to assume that our kids will behave badly towards the dog.
First things first: teach your children to leave the dog alone. If your kids want to play with the dog, then that’s too bad—the dog doesn't want to play with them! Maybe you’ll get the dog back to that point someday through counter-conditioning, but you can’t force play to happen, especially if the dog is uncomfortable. Training doesn’t give a dog a whole new personality. We need to respect the dog enough to understand that this is a living creature with its own needs, wants, and fears. It’s so important to respect the dog as an individual and not place all of the responsibility on their shoulders.
In today’s post, I want to talk about crate training.
The crate is very important for the majority of dogs, and its level of importance is often related to other factors like age and maturity. In the beginning stages of training your dog in your home, it’s a safe and calm spot (ideally) for your dog to relax and not do anything wrong.
When you’ve got a new dog in your house, they don’t know the rules. If you’re not around, they may want to chew or go to the bathroom on the floor. The crate is a fantastic tool for teaching them not to do that. Dogs are creatures of habit. If we prevent them from going to the bathroom indoors and other bad things, that often does the lion’s share of getting them to behave well in your home.
Here’s the thing: a lot of people want to move away from the crate faster than they should. This happens for a few reasons. First of all, they look at the dog and say, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be in a crate! That wouldn’t be fun for me.” (Usually they say this before they go off to work in a cubicle.) And maybe the crate doesn't fit in the house very well. Maybe it’s a hassle to crate up the dog rather than leaving him out. This results in a lot of people moving away from crates far too quickly.
However, any time you move away from a training tool too quickly—whether it’s a crate, a leash, or treats—its pattern hasn't had the chance to set in. Patterns take different amounts of time to form, depending on what you’re asking the dog. After a week or two, with a lot of repetitions, I might get my dog to sit or lie down reliably. That’s not a terribly hard thing for the dog to do, so we need less repetitions to establish it. Dogs need a lot of repetitions, however, to be able to remain loose in the house. They need to not pee on the floor or not chew up the couch cushion hundreds and hundreds of times in order to learn.
Being in the house while you’re gone is a much more complex behavior than learning to sit. When it comes to the sit command, the dog has two options: sit or not sit. When it comes to being loose in the house, however, the dog is presented with a myriad options: he could lounge around, get nervous and chew, get on the couch, bark at the window, or poop on the floor. In order to overcome all those options, we need a lot of repetition.
That’s where the crate comes in. Because we’re not always in a position to give repetitions when the dog needs them, we give him somewhere to be calm and relax. That’s why I call crates “the silent teachers.” When it’s time to shift away from the crate, it’s best to do so in very small stages. I wouldn’t look at my year-old puppy and say “Wow, she hasn't pooped on or chewed anything in over a year. Time for eight hours loose when I’m gone at work!” That’ll backfire on you almost every time.
In today’s post, I’d like to tackle a topic that comes up a lot among my clients: developing realistic expectations for our dogs.
On one end of the spectrum of expectations is the dog owner that doesn't realize the great accomplishments and successes they’ve had. For instance, say someone is dealing with an aggressive dog. When they come back to us after a few sessions, they’re down in the dumps. But as we dig deeper, we find out that before they couldn't even go on a walk because the dog was lunging.
The dog used to be a nightmare, but a few months into the training he’s doing way better. Unfortunately, the owner’s complaint then becomes: “We’re doing fine on walks, except when another dog charges at us! Then we’ve got a problem.” That’s totally valid, and we have to fix it. But it’s not uncommon to see someone make huge strides and solve 80% of their dogs’ problems, yet still focus on the problems.
From a mindset perspective, that’s an issue. It’s hard to get the ideal dog if you’re constantly nitpicking. If you tend to dwell on problems despite progress, then your misplaced focus on will affect your dog training. There’s nothing wrong with saying: “We’ve made some awesome progress, even though we still need to fix this issue.” With the correct consistency and technique, that mindset can get you a lot of results.
The other side of the spectrum is made up of folks who are in denial about their dogs’ enormous problems. They say things like: “Oh, he’s so good—he’ll wait as long as it takes for his dinner!” or “He attacks everything he sees, but he knows how to sit!” This type of owner only sees the good.
Obviously, they know that the dog has major issues, which is why they’re seeking out training in the first place. But they have a very difficult time training their dog because their standards are so low and they excuse all the problems that they see. That’s why, when a client tells me that their dog bit the mailman but knows how to shake and speak on command, I’ll say: “Amazing...aside from all the murdering, right?”
Having these unrealistic perspectives about our dogs—either seeing only the tiny good things if the dog has huge problems, or only seeing the bad things even though the dog is making big strides—is not conducive to results. To solve this problem, I always encourage people to look at their dog training from an “addition and subtraction” perspective.
Here’s what that looks like. First, we remove all our care and emotion toward the dog and look at actual behaviors that influence our quality of life and the dog’s quality of life. Forget about how much we love our dog and how much he loves us. What do you need to add to your dog’s behavior to get the quality of life that we both want? What do you need to subtract? Addition might be adding behaviors like good recall on hikes; subtraction might be getting rid of a habit like jumping up on the counter.
Once you have your columns of addition and subtraction, you can look at them as simply behavior issues. If you started out with a dog that had a bunch of troubles, you can look back to those columns and realize that those few remaining issues are small in comparison to what you’ve done. You can see that you’ve done a good job. If you’re a little bit in denial, you might look at those columns and realize that you need to subtract all the murder and add every good behavior under the sun. Maybe you’ll realize that you need to buckle down and train.
In the end, a more correct perspective on who your dog is, what your relationship with him is, and what your dog needs will get you results so much faster.
In today’s post, I want to speak a little more about socialization. I’ve written about how almost every dog trainer hates dog parks, but I want to get a little deeper and help people understand what we’re trying to do with socialization. I talk about what not to do, but that doesn't give a lot of information on what to do. When you understand the purpose behind socialization, it’s easier to know what to do. It’s very hard to accomplish something when you’re just being told “do this” and “do that.” Knowing the core principle makes it easier to figure out what’s best for you and your dog.
“Socialization” is a misused term, and the process itself is often done improperly. When someone gets a puppy or rescues a dog, they think they need to go to the dog park or to a neighbor’s park to get socialized. Most people want their dogs to get around stuff and interact with it. They want their dogs to play and have a good time enjoying those things, whether it’s other dogs or neighbors or children.
That isn’t wrong on its face. But there’s a more complete definition of socialization. We want our dogs’ socialization to quite closely parallel our socialization. In understanding that, we see that the purpose of socialization should be teaching dogs to leave things alone! I know that goes against what every owner—and a lot of trainers—there says, but good socialization ensures that a dog’s primary response is to leave things alone.
Think about it: what goes on in your environment When you’re in line at the grocery store, you don’t need to play with the people around you. You shouldn’t just strike up a game of tic-tac-toe. If you’re driving you should ignore other cars, not signal out the window to get the other drivers’ attention so you can ask them to play later. We don’t touch other people’s houses, cars, or wallets. The list goes on and on. The majority of dogs that you encounter, you should leave alone. You don’t know if they’re scared, anxious, or aggressive. When you encounter people and animals, you should mostly just leave them alone. Most things we encounter in this world should be left alone. If we constantly tried to interact with everything we come across, that would be a problem. The overwhelming majority people don’t work that way. Humans don’t communicate with everyone they meet.
Yet this is exactly what many people expect of their dogs. They want their dog to see another dog and immediately go over to play with them, even though they don’t know if the other dog is aggressive or anxious or mean. Why would you want your dog to interact with that? You don’t know if the people that you come across have good dog sense, so why would you want them petting your dog?
Today I want to talk to you about execution.
No, I’m not taking about executing your dog—even though some of you might be looking at your dog’s behavior problems and wondering if that’s an option! But I’m thinking about executing a plan.
To some extent, this is a flaw in the human condition. A huge percentage of the population wants to write a book. How many actually do? The number of people who write a book is pretty tiny in comparison to the amount of people who say they want to do so. No one executes on their plan. What about losing weight—how many times over a person’s life do they say they want to get healthy and then not execute on that desire? Or what about people who don’t get along with their spouse or children, yet complaining about it is as far as their problem-solving goes.
People’s thought process stops at the lament. “Woe is me!” we say. “I can’t have what I want.” That’s because execution is the hardest part.
Execution done poorly is usually better than execution not done at all, because execution done poorly gives you data that you can modify in order to make it better. A lot of people are held back in their dog training because they’re frustrated and don’t see any results or because they’re lying to themselves about their execution. I remember working with a client whose dog had a house training issue. The dog was new to the house and didn’t know the rules, so I recommended 100% supervision and told them exactly how to do it: keep the dog on the leash at first, then move on to using down stays. The clients said they understood. But a few weeks later, they said “The dog is going to the bathroom in the house!”
With this post, I want to talk about languages. I speak Spanish very, very well. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of. If I talk to someone on the phone, oftentimes they think that I’m a native speaker. I think that’s a pretty big deal, considering that most people’s second language
Am I tooting my own horn? Absolutely!
However, it took me many years to get good at speaking Spanish. I still practice it whenever I can with my clients who are from Mexico or random people that I meet. I always joke that I’m good at two things: Spanish and dogs. So far I’ve made a living with dogs. Maybe it’ll be Spanish one day.
When I first started learning Spanish, if someone had just come up to me and started talking in Spanish, getting upset when I didn’t understand, I would have been completely confused. After all, what is language?
I’m sure there’s an excellent dictionary definition out there that I’m going to butcher right now, but here goes: essentially, language is external communication. It’s something that people agree on and jointly decide to use. At some point, people decided that the word “me” means “this guy right here.” Some other people agreed that “comer” means “to eat.” Some other people agree that “coucher” means “to lie down.” Language is a set of agreed-upon meaning, and when it works people can communicate.
Everything you do in training your dog is an attempt to use a language. When people get a puppy, they tend to bring out treats and trying to talk to the dog in “treat language.” But for the dog, this is brand new language! Some dude with a hot dog in his hand is putting something in front of its nose! This is an external action that has no real meaning to the dog at first. There must be a meaning attached to a language for it to be effective.
As another example, I often talk to clients who are very confused because their new puppy won’t walk on leash. They say, “He’s a dog, shouldn’t he walk on a leash?” Not necessarily. Leash pressure and leash communication is a language. It’s not something that a dog automatically understands. The same is true of e-collars and voices. Every tool is a different language we’re attempting to teach a dog.
We’re not just using English, or Spanish, or Dutch when we talk to our dogs. We’re also using body language, tone, and other subtle, hard-to-qualify means of communication. We use a variety of different languages, but all of them are foreign to our dog.
People recognize certain things as universal, perhaps because they’re ingrained or perhaps because we learned them growing up. We get to a point where we can communicate with body language, but some people have a very difficult time with that. We communicate with spoken language, but if you don’t know the language that someone speak you’ll obviously struggle to talk to them. But when we use food or e-collars or voices with our dog, we often find that those “languages” are too foreign to our dogs. Many owners don’t take the time to properly give meaning to the things they’re trying to do. Those people end up with very confused dogs.
If you’ve ever tried to learn or teach another language, you know it’s not easy. So when we’re talking about teaching languages across species, we should expect it to be difficult. Bear that in mind when you’re frustrated with your dog or wondering why he doesn’t understand what you’re saying. More often than not, you’re not communicating as well as you could be.
Husbands are the bane of my existence. Now, I realize that I happen to be a husband. Is this a post about self-loathing? No! See, I’m a good type of husband. But I always joke with other dog trainers that if it weren’t for husbands, I’d be a rich man. Husbands have cost me more dog training over the years than anyone.
This is something that’s happened numerous times. I’m not calling anyone out. The other day, I got a call from a woman who’d been referred to us by her friends. She said, “We have a real problem. Our dog is attacking people. He has some big-time aggression. My husband’s been working with him, but we just can’t seem to make headway.” We chatted, and I told her the program that I recommended. She immediately responded that this was what she thought they needed. “Now I just have to see if my husband is on board,” she said.
So I sent her the information, and told her I’d be in touch in a few days to see if she had any questions. I could tell she wanted to move forward. A few days later, I called back to ask if they wanted to get started, but I talked to the husband. He said: “Well, we’ve decided not to move forward. I’m just going to solve this on my own.”
Now, I’m a guy that doesn't get offended easily—but even to me, that’s kind of offensive! I’ve dedicated thousands of hours of my life toward fixing dog aggression, and to hear someone who’s had maybe three or four dogs in his life decides to fix his problem on his own is crazy. It’s as if I heard from my mechanic that my engine needed to rebuilt and deciding—even though I’m not mechanically inclined—to fix it myself. Or going to the doctor and hearing that I need to have my gallbladder removed and saying “Okay, I’ll do that one on my own.” It’s easy to say that you can do someone else’s job without any training, but it’s very hard to do it.
Years ago, when I was a little more fiery, I should shoot back at people who said things like that. I would ask them: “If you’re going to fix it, then why haven't you fixed it by now? What’s going to be different tomorrow? What will you know that you don’t know today?” If you’re reading books and trying new things but nothing seems to work, then tomorrow won’t be any different.
What is the point of trial and error? Maybe if your budget for doing a big project is absolutely not there, then I see the value of putting in sweat equity on your own. But the reality is that so many people won’t be able to figure out how to do what they need to do.
Someone asked me an interesting question recently, and I wanted to share it with you. The question was this: “You have over 20 years of experience working with dogs, so you’ve seen a lot of things. Given that, if your experience and knowledge was erased, but if you were able to keep mastery of one dog training concept, what would it be?”
I thought this was an intriguing question when it came up, but it actually didn’t take me very long at all to determine exactly what that one concept would be. For me, it’s the ability to create focus.
Focus oftentimes is looking at the owner. Now, I’m not talking about the kind of focus that is created when your dog looks at a treat you’re holding. Rather, I’m talking about a level of focus where the dog is engaged with you, trusts you, and defers to you. That focus, the more I think about it, is at the root of solving 99% of the problems we deal with. Aggression, anxiety, bad manners, lack of obedience, destruction—so much of this either goes away entirely on its own or goes away much more easily if you’ve established focus.
I’d like you to do a little thought exercise with the next five or ten dogs you see, whether it’s a dog you come across walking down the street with its owner or a friend’s dog that you meet at their house. Which dogs you encounter have focus on their owners? How many of them pay attention to their owner rather than pulling ahead to sniff at every bush? How many of them defer to their owner when someone is coming through the door, rather than going to jump up or attack the newcomer?
When people walk into our shop for the first time, their dogs’ minds are everywhere: they’re jumping up on the counter, they’re backing away from people because it’s scared or lunging because it’s aggressive. I can only think of two or three times in my whole career as a dog trainer when I’ve met a dog for the first time who was attentive to its owner. Of course, that makes sense—why would anyone be hiring me if they already had that?
But at the root of fixing anything you might hope to fix at any point in your dog’s life is getting your dog to focus on you or your commands. You might ask your dog to focus on lying down in a particular place, heeling by your side, or coming toward you. That level of focus impacts everything! You’ll have a closer relationship with your dog. Your dog will be a thousand times calmer. It’s at the root of everything.
“Checks and balances” is a term that we use frequently in the United States to describe politics. We often use it to describe the three different branches of government: legislative, judicial, and executive. (I can’t believe I remembered those!) Ideally, the legislative checks the executive branch, the executive checks the judicial branch, and so on. As a result, a single branch can’t run away and do whatever it wants. Whether that works well is a topic of hot debate.
This is also a term that I use a lot in dog training, in a very similar way. In government, this system helps to balance each branch. What we end up with is something that works much better. Dogs are much the same. If we allow one mindset to continually get its way and go without any sort of balance you almost end up with problems, such as aggression, anxiety, or hyperactivity. That’s just the reality, and that’s why I talk so much about creating checks and balances in our dogs’ lives.
Dogs’ minds and bodies are very intertwined, and they’re not terribly imaginative. Now, as humans, we have highly connected bodies and minds, but our behavior can be determined by imagination or anticipation of something that hasn’t happened yet, or memory of past incidences. Dogs’ behavior is also influenced by those things, but they live so much more “in the now” that their bodies and minds are the same. What their body is doing, their mind is doing as well.
We’re not like that. People can sit on the couch watching TV, for instance, while being absolutely terrified about how they’ll find the money for their bills or whether they’ll ever get their kids to behave. You don’t see that behavior with dogs. They don’t simmer. You don’t see a dog’s body sitting there while its mind is freaking out.
If we can put checks in front of body motion, we often find balance. A “check” might be something like making your dog wait at the door, so he isn’t rushing physically or mentally. Or maybe sitting for a treat or a meal, so he isn’t just getting food because he feels like it. Or, when you’re on leash, ask your dog to walk properly by your side to restrict his ability to pull and jerk on the leash. The list goes on and on!
In this post, I’d like to speak to you about how to create a healthy relationship between training time and “real life.” I find myself talking about this a lot because many of our clients struggle to find that balance. They tell me: “When I go outside to a field or park to practice this, my dog does amazing. But when we’re just around the house, he has problems.” I always reply that these two situations are in fact different, because we’re behaving differently and expecting different things from the dog.
When people are out training, they walk a certain way and pay 100% attention to their dog. They have their training gear and treats with them all the time, and they’re ready to follow through on their commands. But when they’re just hanging out in the house watching TV, they don't always follow through. As a result, their dog realizes that they have two sets of rules: one for who they’re out training and another for when they’re not. In these scenarios, we teach our dogs when to pay attention to us. That ends up being a big problem.
There are a couple ways around this issue. The first is to make sure that no matter where you give a command, you’re in a position to back it up. This mostly applies during a training period of a few months, since you typically reach a point when your dog just listens to you if you’re doing things well. Especially at the beginning of a training program, however, you need to be able to make sure that your commands happen every time you give them. Regardless of whether you’re watching TV or having a training session in the yard. If you don’t, then you’re showing your dog that you’re not serious and won’t follow through.
We also recommend something to our clients called integration training. Integration training is setting up scenarios where you’re otherwise occupied but also ready to teach your dog. Watching TV or making dinner? That’s a great time to work on down stays and place commands. Giving your dog his meal? Then work on a sit command. Walking through a door? Work on waiting! You’re anyway in the middle of doing something, so why not do two things at once? Integrate training with everyday moments so your dog realizes that even when you are making dinner or tidying the bedroom, your commands will still be reinforced.
Sadly, a lot of dogs realize that they don’t get commands unless they’re out on the training field. If you can integrate training more into your daily life, your dog will start to understand that they need to be obedient at all times. The key here is to not create such a wide differentiation between training and living. Those two areas of life shouldn’t feel far apart. Living with your dog should feel similar to training him.
In this post, I want to talk about stubborn dogs.
Here’s the thing: even if you think you have a stubborn dog, I doubt it. You might, because they do exist. But I highly doubt that you have one.
It’s common for me to be working with a client and hear something like, “Oh gosh, my dog is so stubborn!” This is a frequent claim that owners make about their dogs. Sometimes I’ll agree with them—but not often.
When I call a dog “stubborn,” this is what I mean: the dog fully understands what you’re asking, and then chooses not to listen or pay attention. Makes sense, right? It’s not a crazy concept. But the reality is that very few dogs actually know what’s being asked of them, and so many owners think their dog knows exactly what’s being asked of them!
So when owners complain that their dog knows what they’re asking but doesn’t do it, they almost always mean that their dog is clueless! The dog hasn’t been taught very well. Maybe the dog understands what “come” means in certain situations, but once they change the setting or add a distraction he is confused. Now they aren’t coming when called. The dog isn’t stubborn, he just hasn’t been taught how to deal with distractions or to obey from a distance. A dog who is truly stubborn understands the command, yet doesn't obey it.
The reason this is so rare is that if a dog does understand what’s expected and desire, they usually want to do it. Most dogs enjoy work and are totally willing to please. They enjoy the camaraderie that comes from working together with their owners. Of course, some dogs are little knuckleheads that know what you want but won’t do it.
I see this situation go awry often. Frequently, owners say that their dogs know what they want because of a facial expression. They might say to the dog, “Hey, come here!” When the dog doesn’t, they go after it. If the dog appears to be sorry, then they say, “See, he knows what I was talking about.” That’s not true. The dog simply understands that its owner is upset. He’s trying to say “Sorry, I would have come if you had told me that’s what you wanted—but you didn’t.”
Other owners might say “He heels it a lot, just not off-leash” or “He can sit, but he doesn’t when guests come over.” They think that’s because their dog is stubborn. In reality, it only seems like the dog was taught to come or stay. The second you add those other elements that you didn’t spend any time teaching about, the dog doesn’t understand. It’s not because he’s stubborn.
Stubbornness is active; not understanding is passive. If your dog is being disobedient, it’s probably because of the latter. Will you come across stubborn dogs occasionally? Yes. But out of the dozens of dogs that I’m currently working with, only two or three of them are actively stubborn. If you frequently find yourself calling your dog “stubborn,” slap yourself on the wrist and recognize that there’s probably something you’re not teaching. Only then can you start teaching your dog better!
With this post I want to talk about overcoming fear, perhaps in a manner that you aren’t familiar with. While I have written about this subject in the past, I want to cover some new ground.
Today I had my last private session with a particular client before they start coming to our group sessions. This client had gotten a two-year-old rescue dog whose history and background was totally unknown. When she first got the dog, she was scared of everything: sounds, people, and even her own shadow. Since she was an exceptionally nervous dog who didn’t like to cuddle, her owner really wished that she would bond more with her. A lot of owners want physical affection from their dogs, and this dog just wasn’t into that.
I can still remember sitting in our first session and taking about this issue. The client asked me: “What can we do to get her to want to bond with me? How can we help her get over this fear?” She had tried many things that you would naturally do, like giving the dog lots of treats. Unfortunately, however, the dog’s fear was bigger than her desire for treats. In a moment of fear, the challenges she faced overcame any of the need she felt to get a treat.
In our first session, I told the owner that I wasn’t sure what would happen, but that I hoped that as we worked through obedience training, she and her dog would bond naturally. Today was the last season in our Transforming Your Dog In Sixty Days Program. We’re essentially two months into the program, so I asked this client how her and her dog had been bonding recently. Her response? “It’s great! She wants to please me now, she wants to work for me and cuddle with me. She’s excited when I get home.” Not only that, but she’s not afraid of people and situations she used to fear.
A question I get frequently is “How aloud I walk my dog?” I know that sounds silly, but all people are really wondering is whether they should let their dog sniff around and wander or keep their dog next to them the whole time.
There is no absolute answer to this question. We handle this in a very structured way, which we believes helps a dog become calm and get over aggression, and behave well. We’ve found that walking dogs in a specific way does make it easier to achieve those results. Maybe that sounds ridiculous to you.
The answer, to me, comes down to context. Generally speaking, if I’m walking a dog on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, the dog is heeling. If I notice that she needs to use the bathroom, I’ll scoot over to a green strip and encourage her to use it. In that case, I would let her wander a little bit. But for the most part, I want her at my side when we’re in the neighborhood. Now, dogs who have reactivity and aggression issues, this is ten times more important. When your dog is in a position to encounter distractions and triggers, they really need to pay attention to you. Is a walk about exercise? Yes. But it’s actually more about what’s going on with the mind than what’s going on with the body.
I’ve had clients through the years who say things like: “My dog and I will go up to the hills and he’ll chase me on my mountain bike for two hours—but when we come home, he still has a ton of energy! I don’t know what to do!” How do you get that energy our? Well, if that same dog walks beside their owner in a focused way for thirty minutes, they’re suddenly a completely different animal. They’re calm, relaxed, and yes, even tired. You tire a dog out much more quickly through mental exercise than physical exercise. So when you’re in the neighborhood, walk your dog next to your side. He’ll handle distractions better and feel more fulfilled.
Some people struggle with this because they like their dogs to be able to wander. Today, for instance, I was out walking my dog on a trail near my home. Up until we reached the trail, she heeled at my side the whole time. But once we got to the trail itself I let her off leash to run around.
Today’s post covers a topic that’s become controversial in recent years: electric training collars. These tools, sometimes referred to as shock collars or remote collars, are often accompanied by a lot of debate. The bottom line, however, is that they’re incredibly useful tools. My company does a lot of great work with the e-collar.
The question I receive often about the e-collar is simple: “Why do you use it?” I usually get this question from two competing groups of people. The first of these groups is comprised of trainers who use treats and toys (and hugs) in order to get results. When they ask this question, it’s normally with the implication that I’m a monster. The second group that asks that question is just asking because they’re interested and wonder why I use one. In today’s post, I want to spend some time talking about why I love e-collars, why I believe that they’re the most humane way to train a dog, and why they’re so much misunderstood.
At the root of my love for this tool is the fact that any healthy and humane dog training program has to have some element of consequence, both negative and positive. A positive consequence might be a treat or a pat on the head. But a good training program also includes negative consequences. If you run into a dog trainer that says that isn’t the case, then leave! They’re not informed about the latest research into how dogs learn. Some sort of physical consequence has to exist for any living creature to learn.
If we understand that truth, then we want to use consequences that are easy on us and easy on the dog. We want something that is leveraged; in other words, that produces a great result for a little effort. We want something that is fundamentally humane and fair. When we put all these things together, we get the electric collar.
Back in the day when the electric collar was new—around 20 years ago—they had three levels: high, higher, and highest. They would blast the dog with a literal, and very painful, shock. But technology has changed a lot in the past two decades, and today’s e-collars have various levels of intensity. When I let people feel the e-collar, they’re often surprised because it doesn’t feel like a shock. People often assume that these collars produce the zap you’d get off a live wire or the fence around a cattle yard. But it’s not a big jolt. It feels more like a tickle or a pulse.
These tickles are annoying or itchy to the dog, though. For 99% of the time, that’s all the consequence that you need. At its best the e-collar is pleasant because it’s giving the dog attention, and at its worst it’s only slightly aggravating. Since we already know that we need a negative deterrent, why wouldn’t we make it the easiest one possible? That deterrent is the e-collar.
In today’s blog post, I want to talk to you about pressure.
you’ll hear many dog trainers, including myself, talk about something called “pressure and release.” This is essentially a training strategy that uses the combination of a pressure—like a leash or body language—and a rewarding release.
Maybe you have a leash pulling towards you, and as the dog comes that pressure is released and the dog is rewarded. Or maybe the dog has been given a stay command on a bed, and when he tries to get up we move toward him, increasing body pressure until he sits back down.
This concept isn’t unique to dog training. In fact, horse trainers use it as well. And it’s modeled on the way life actually works. If you get up in the morning because there’s pressure to pay your bills or make breakfast. Even something like going to the movies comes from the pressure to have fun or avoid boredom. Pressure and release dictate everything we do.
Here’s the problem with training that involves release but no pressure. Treats and praise should be a big part of any training program, but when you use them exclusively you get a one-dimensional dog that doesn’t know how to deal with pressure. And life is pressure! It’s full of other dogs, people, cars, and shopping carts and Halloween decorations. If your dog doesn’t know how to handle external pressure, he won’t be able to cope with those scary things.
In using pressure and release, we teach our dogs to look to us for solutions. By paying attention to the owner and listening to commands, your dog will develop depth. He will learn to react to stress with crazy behavior, but to work through the pressure in a way that is healthy. If all you’re giving your dog is treats and love and giggles, he won’t be able to deal with the world.
Today I want to talk about drugs. Not in the Nancy Reagan, 1970s, “Just say no!” way, but in relation to dogs.
It seems that every year, more and more dogs are getting on drugs to hopefully modify their behavior. These are drugs similar to the ones that humans take for depression and anxiety to deal from everything from aggression to hyperactivity to excessive barking.
There are generally two groups that push for drugs. The first is veterinarians, whose mindset I can understand even if I don’t agree with it. I love vets and I think we all need them. But they don’t generally have expertise in dealing with behavior. Even veterinarian behaviorists tend not to be up to snuff on how to affect change in dogs’ behavior.
Why is this? Because veterinarians look at the body. They want to know how they can neuter a dog, heal its wounds, or treat an allergy. When it comes to behavior, their training persists. So when a veterinarian is confronted with an aggressive dog, then, they often suggest giving a pill to make him calm down.
I don’t agree with this impulse, but I do understand it. There’s a large parallel with what has been happening for a while in the human pharmaceutical industry, where a lot of doctors and veterinarians are prescribing things that they probably don’t need to. I can’t speak to the human medical side of things, but I am an expert in dog behavior. I’ve helped many dogs get off their medication. On the other hand, I’ve seen what medication can do. Sometimes it can be a great help.
The second group that pushes drugs is dog trainers. I’m mostly referring to the “pure positive” or “anti-adversive” style of dog training that’s appeared in the past twenty years. While every dog training program should contain plenty of positive reinforcement, these trainers don’t use corrections at all. These types of trainers also push for a lot of drugs and medications. The reason is very simple: you can’t train dogs very well using a “pure positive” method. Most dogs with bigger problems like aggression or anxiety can’t be helped by a trainer who’s just pushing treats, so something has to fill the gap. A lot of these trainers are inexperienced or simply lack expertise. They’ll suggest that their clients go to the vet and put their dog on medication instead of actually training the dog with a method that works. This is becoming a big problem.
Medication, at its root, is a chemical. For that reason, it may be very helpful to a person who has a chemical imbalance such as bipolar disorder or thyroid problems. When the body is not producing the chemicals or hormones it needs to be healthy, medication can be hugely helpful. This is not an anti-drug post!
But I do believe that a majority of dog behavior problems are not related to chemical imbalances. Now, I’m speaking not from hard research, but from anecdotal experience as a person who’s trained thousands of dogs. Nearly every problem I see is a simple behavior problem, stemming from poor socialization, lack of correction or structure at home, or not enough exercise. A number of factors can cause behavior problems, but very few of them are chemically related.
In today’s post, I want to talk about a potential problem that people run into because they misunderstand their dog’s needs.
If you poll dog trainers, you generally won’t get the same answer from any of us. We tend to disagree about everything. Sometimes I think that’s just for sport. You could ask “What’s the best color shoe to train dogs in?” and some trainers would argue that red or gray or black shoes are better than others. The reality is this: we don’t agree on many things.
But there’s one thing that most trainers actually agree on: don’t take your dogs to a dog park. Dog parks tend to create inappropriate relationships, which in turn lead to aggression and fear. The majority of the aggression and anxiety problems we see at my company stem from time at dog parks.
Every time I say this, I get an email from someone whose dog does wonderfully at parks. Well, some people can smoke cigarettes for ninety years without getting cancer, but that doesn’t mean that is good behavior! The same is true of dog parks. I’m sure that there are dogs out there who have no problem going to the park, but the percentage isn’t very high.
When I talk to people about dog parks, I try to get to the root of the issue. Owners often say that their dog loves the park, I don’t want to be that jerk who immediately replies: “Oh, that’s bad!” I want to get to the bottom of things and understand what people want their dogs to get out of the park. Many owners will say “My dog needs to play with other dogs,” or “We got two puppies at the same time so they wouldn’t get bored.”
Today I want to talk to you about pain—because I’m in it!
Here’s a little context. Earlier this year, in the spring, I realized I needed to get to the gym. When I was a teenage, I really enjoyed lifting weight. Then life happened. I got busy jobs and eventually started my own company, and I lost the enjoyment of going to the gym. This year, I decided that whether or not I liked it, I needed it. So I started going.
I went three to five times a week to lift eights, and I actually started liking it. I rediscovered the enjoyment I had experienced in my teens and early twenties: lifting a lot of weight, feeling good, and getting healthier.
Then, in July of this year, I tore my chest muscle and part of my bicep during a bench press. That was just over two months ago. It was an enormous amount of pain, and I’m still in pain to a degree. I can’t move some muscles very well and I definitely can’t lift with my left side. (As you may remember, I wrote a few posts about this.) But yesterday I decided to start going to the gym three times a week, even if it’s just to do squats and other lower-body exercises. I need to get back to feeling good and losing weight.
Yesterday I did some squats. Do you know what? After two months off, I could manage way fewer repetitions and way less weight than I could before. It was pretty pathetic, and people were probably laughing at me. Today, I’m in an enormous amount of pain. I’m making my wife upset. Last night I was in bed groaning, “Oh, what do I do?” and I think she brought me medicine just so I would stop whining. At a certain point I was sitting on the toilet and yelling because it hurt my legs—and she came running, wondering what was wrong. So I’m annoying the heck out of my wife! And believe it or not, this totally relates to dog training.
In today’s post, I want to talk about maintenance. Quite often, I hear people saying things like: “I just want my dog to be like that service dog that I saw,” or “I want my dog to look like that dog on TV or YouTube.” When they say this, people are typically referring to one of two things: either the high level of training that the other dog received, or the illusion of a maintenance-free dog.
It’s not that these people don’t want to take care of their dogs, but when they see a demonstration with a police dog or a video on YouTube, they assume that those dogs are automatically obedient. What people don’t see is the maintenance training that goes into making sure that the dog stays that way.
For instance, most police officers I know who train dogs get together for training every week. This is usually at a training club, separate from the everyday training that they might go through around their house or during work. Likewise, service dogs need to be maintained through constant practice and field trips.
This is the nature of dog training as well as life. I often ask clients how often they receive training at their jobs. Sometimes it’s never, but oftentimes they reply that their education is continuous. Whatever the job, there is no such thing as “trained and done.”
Every dog has its own personality and character, and this is where those differences come into play. Let’s say that we have dogs that look identical on the surface: two year-old Labrador Retrievers, both hyper leash-pullers, neither of whom come when called. On paper, those two dogs are pretty similar. Yet even if we do the exact same training with both, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that one dog will need more maintenance than another.
Some dogs fall into a rhythm and maintain their training with very little effort. Other dogs, however, require us to be very consistent with their training and make sure that they get what they need. Some dogs need more, some dogs needs less.
Well, I hate to ruin things right away—but the perfect dog doesn't exist. That’s a tough thing for me to admit, because when it comes down to it I like to provide my clients with everything they want and need. I want them to have the perfect dog and be the happiest clients in the world. But at the end of the day, no one can create a perfect dog because no one is able to follow training principles perfectly—even dog trainers. It took me a long time to ever admit
When I first started dog training, I thought that my clients could never know that my dogs did things wrong sometimes. I believed they would think I was a bad trainer who didn’t know what I was talking about. As time went on, however, I realized that no matter how good a job I do at instructing, I’ll never produce the perfect dog.
My dogs are great, but even they aren’t perfect. They don’t cause a mess or chew stuff up, they come when called and heel when I ask them to, they can be left out without causing problems. They’re 96% of what people want out of a dog.
Every now and then Honey (my fourteen-year-old lady) will still steal something off the table. She never did that until we had kids; they were the ones who taught her. At the time I knew how to step in and fix it, but sometimes there’s an opportunity cost involved. The problem of Honey taking a piece of toast off the counter every once and a while isn’t worth the effort to fix. On the other hand, my dog Chip has started to get into the toilet. It’s pretty disgusting, so I’m absolutely working to correct it. Other than that, though, all she ever does is maybe jump on someone every once and a while.
So in general, my dogs are easy to maintain. In spite of their being very well trained, however, they still do things wrong. Again, the thing I always try to help people understand is that there are things we cannot negotiate on—things like aggression, solid obedience, destruction, house training, and good manners. If Chip were jumping on people all the time, for instance, then that would be non-negotiable. It would need to be dealt with right away. But with other problems, we need to look at the opportunity cost and ask whether it’s worth the amount of time and the amount of effort it would take to correct it.
In this post, I want to talk about mathematics—specifically, addition and subtraction. I like to give formulas to my clients and break them down into easily-digestible, bite-sized chunks. When it comes down to it, everything we want from out dogs fall into addition and subtract: there are things we want to add to our dogs, and things we want to subtract.
Addition is usually a proactive thing. We want our dogs to come when called, heel when told, and sit nicely to get dinner. Sometimes subtraction almost seems like the opposite: we want to subtract leash pulling, jumping, peeing in the house. We treat addition and subtraction in different ways, we communicate those concepts in different ways
Subtraction is oftentimes the easier of the two to fix. When you want to subtract aggression that’s not as true, but “subtracting” something like jumping or chewing or digging is usually easier to fix. I normally look at two things. First, is the dog being fulfilled properly? Does it have what it needs? It’s frustrating when I speak with an owner who complains that their dog is chewing up stuff, yet I know that the dog in question is seven months old, untrained, and left loose in the house while they’re at work. That dog isn’t getting the supervision or exercise that he needs. So it makes sense that he would chew up your things. The first thing to look at is whether your dog is getting what he needs to be happy, healthy, and safe—things like obedience training, structure, and supervision. If he is, there’s usually less to subtract.
Now, if your dog is getting what he needs but is still misbehaving, then you typically don’t need any more than a simple correction. If you've watched my videos or read my books, you’ve heard me talk about this so many times. Many people believe that correcting a dog makes it hate or fear you. That’s utter nonsense. We can absolutely correct a dog for jumping, nipping, or chewing. In fact, it’s healthy to correct our dogs so they understand what’s right and wrong, because many of these issues are related to safety. A correction might be a spray bottle, a tug on the leash, an e-collar, or many other things. Generally, if you need to subtract even after you’ve ensured that your dog is being fulfilled properly, it’s a case of not correcting them properly.
In this post, I’m going to tell you about a few of my family’s imperfections. Right now, it’s Saturday morning in our house. I’m about to head off to meet a client and the kids have all gone off with my wife. In our family we keep a clean home. (I don’t tidy that much, but my wife does a great job!) If my wife could see what the house looks like right now, however, I know she’d be upset. There are shoes and clothes on the floor, the kids knocked all the pillows off the couch, and some people left some towels on the stairs. And believe me, it can get worse than it is now! We sometimes get a little sloppy, as I’m sure you do too.
Here in the living room, next to this little bit of a mess, is my dog. She’s young—just over a year old—and she’s a very high-energy dog. A lot of trainers would say would say: “If you don’t want the dog to chew the shoes or steal the headphones, then you have to hide them from her so she can’t do anything wrong.” But we’ve taught this dog that she needs to calmly relax indoors, even if she’d much rather chew on things.
I have a young, energetic dog. Even though this mess will eventually be cleaned up, I’m not worried about it. I’m not worried that if I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, she’ll chew on the shoes. I’m not worried that if I put my feet up and watch TV, she’ll ruin the headphones.
I’m not worried because I’ve taught her the difference between right and wrong. I know this sounds crazy—why wouldn’t you teach that? But there’s a large movement in dog training that says not to teach your dog right and wrong. Instead, some trainers want you to teach your dog something more right. In other words, clean up all the clothes and shoes immediately and just teach your dog to chew on their bone. Well, I do teach her to chew on her bones. She’s got handfuls of them around somewhere. But at the same time, I need to teach her that it’s not okay to chew the pillows or steal the headphones.
Today I want to talk about booking travel and how that relates to your dog. I’ve been booking some travel lately and have some other travel coming up. A month or two ago I went to New York for work to get a dog, and I’ve been booking Thanksgiving travel to go back home, I have a trip to San Diego coming up for a work conference, I’m going to Hawaii to work with a service dog. So I’m booking a lot of travel!
When I was on my way to New York, I found two flights. One was about $50 more, but it was nonstop—and that’s a big deal when you’re going from Salt Lake City to New York. A layover can mean several hours difference. That’s probably worth $50, right? Coming back I was going to have a service dog with me, so I figured that the extra leg room might be worth the extra money.
As I’ve booked all this travel I’ve realized something: you go into a purchase thinking that you’re going to spend a certain amount of money, and then a little shift occurs, and suddenly you’re spending a little more. We’re going out to California for Thanksgiving, and calculating how much it costs to drive. It takes twelve hours to drive there and twelve hours to drive back, and we’re only going to be there for a few days. Meanwhile, flying only takes an hour. It’ll cost a little bit more, but we’re thinking about it.
I’m also going out to San Diego for this conference. I could get in really early without a hotel room, or I could arrive the night before and be a little more comfortable and not need to rush so much. Maybe that’s worth the money, I thought.
Perhaps you’ve also done this with travel. It seems like every time i travel it costs me a few more dollars here and there. Instead of waiting for the bus, I get the Uber. Instead of doing the difficult thing, I opt for the easier one. Just to make things more comfortable, I end up spending a little bit more.
In today’s post, I want to talk to you about dog aggression. Specifically, I want to address one of the questions I receive a lot. This is a topic that makes a lot of people frustrated, and come to me saying: “I’m sure I’ve done something wrong, I feel like such a bad dog owner.”
I’m describing owners who have dogs with aggression and have been hearing things from people about where that aggression comes from. There’s this weird and strange myth going around that says dogs are only aggressive if people have abused them or trained them to be aggressive.
This is crazy, because aggression comes from so many different places. At its root, the majority of the aggression that I see comes from fear, insecurity, and anxiety. When a dog is presented with something that makes it feel fear or anxiety, the dog has three available options: fight, flight, and avoidance.
A lot of people are familiar with fight or flight. Watch National Geographic for a little bit and you’ll hear the commentator talk about it. Dogs definitely use both of these strategies, but they also use something that we use a lot: avoidance. Many people get confused and say, “My dog couldn’t be afraid. He runs up to people and other dogs and attacks them. If he were afraid, he wouldn’t do that.”
Not so! In fact, fighting is many dogs’ coping mechanism for fear. They realize that if they are feeling stressed, showing aggression might help them win. A dog usually wants to be the first guy to throw a punch. If you think about it, people do this all the time. Insecure people are constantly starting emotional, physical, and mental fights because of their fears. When stress and anxiety are present, both dogs and people often chose to fight.
Flight is running away, while avoidance is looking away from something and pretending it’s not there. The fight response, however, tends to manifest itself through growling, barking, lunging, biting, and attacking.
I want to spit some science at you today.
A lot of you out there know me as an esteemed, renowned scientist—and if that’s the case, I don’t know who you’re watching! I’m not a scientist at all. But I was talking with a client today, who happened to be a psychologist, about a recent study that I want to share with you as well. After I shared a training tip with him, he said that it was exactly like a piece of research that he had read about that was published not too long ago.
Here are the basics of the study. They found a group of—I think—a hundred people who all had anxiety issues. So they split the group into two: the first group got training that advised them of how to behave when they started to feel stressed. They were given meditation techniques and coping mechanisms. The second group received the same technique, but were told to take a half hour to do them every single day.
A year later, they measured both groups on a number of scales. The people who did the exercises as part of their daily routine were overwhelmingly more able to cope with stress. The people who were taught “in-the-moment” techniques had improved their anxiety, but far less than the ones who were given a more proactive approach improved far more.
This post’s topic is a bit unusual. I want to talk about how I used to be a big dirtbag. Okay, maybe I wasn’t that huge of a dirtbag, but it definitely used to be a part of my personality. (Some people that know me today might say that it still is, but we’ll forget about that for now!) I want to talk about one dirtbag quality that I overcame.
As a junior high and high school kid, when something good happened to somebody else I immediately felt jealousy and dislike toward that person. If someone got a good grade on a test or sunk the winning basket, I disliked them. Maybe you can relate. Hopefully, you’ve overcome this as well. It’s a natural part of the human condition, and it happens to a lot of us.
When you look at it, that’s so stupid. It’s ridiculous to think that it hurts you when something good happens to someone else. In reality, it does absolutely nothing to you! Luckily, as a sixteen year old kid, I remember having this vivid, emotional “punch-in-the-face” moment when I realized I needed to stop thinking like that. I found myself, over and over, realizing I had no reason to be upset over something so trivial. So I made an active change to stop behaving that way, and I’ve kept it up for twenty years.
Here’s how. At first, I started congratulating people, smiling at them, and telling them that they'd done a good job. I don’t think I meant it at first, but I was determined to change this part of my personality. After a while—as always happens when you set out to do something and then follow through—the behavior became habitual. When something good happened, I congratulated
Today I want to write a little about ways that we can create mindset. We talk about mindset a lot because it’s the first step to achieving the correct behavior. When your mindset is right, behaving well is laughably easy. But most people struggle to get their dog’s mindset in the right place. They might be trying to get their dog to sit down or stop being aggressive, but the dog is so amped up with adrenaline that they can't properly focus on the command.
Anyone can get a calm dog to sit, lie down, or heel, and creating the correct mindset that can get you to that point. Most owners, however, try to start one or two steps into the process. They want their dog to obey, but they haven't done the work of creating the right mindset.
I was reminded of this truth in a session at a client’s house recently. As soon as I walked in, I saw that the dog was extremely hyper: she was barking, jumping, and generally going crazy. It was only our second session and the owner admitted to not having done her homework from the first one, so I knew that the dog wasn’t in a very good state of mind. The owner was rightfully frustrated, and just wanted her dog to calm down and go lie on her bed.
In this post, I’d like to introduce you to a technique I’ve been doing with certain dogs who have anxiety problems.
Anxiety issues are huge for many dogs. Sometimes they’re big and the dog is terrified of everything. Sometimes they’re small and the dog is just a little bit anxious when he’s around people or other dogs. Regardless of which issue you’re dealing with, this is an exercise that I stumbled upon years ago and found to help quite a bit. In practice it’s very simple, so I’d like to share it with you.
Let me tell the story of how I uncovered this technique. A year ago I was working with a client. I noticed that every time we told the dog to lie down, it would walk over next to the wall or furniture to do so. That dog wanted to be next to something large before it could lie down. The best option would obviously be to lie down next to its owner’s feet, but if we didn’t allow that then the dog would want to lie down near a coffee table or a couch.
I realized that the dog was actually gaining strength from the wall. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but any time that a dog is getting strength from an outside source means that it’s not getting that strength from inside itself. With this particular dog, I practiced a down stay in the middle of the room for 30-45 minutes every day, and it produced marked improvement.
We actually recommend this extended down stay technique to most of our clients, whether their dog is dealing with anxiety or not. But there’s a difference between a regular place command and a place command in the center of a room.
Here’s why: when a dog is on a bed or a mat, they gain strength from that object and doesn't feel vulnerable. But if you ask the dog to go to the middle of the floor (or yard or park), where there’s nothing close to them, then even dogs who previously had great down stays start to get nervous. They don’t know what to do, and might even break the down stay.
In this post, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about how boring dog training is.
Now, I don’t mean what you’re probably thinking! Training is my profession, and it’s also been my passion since I was a teenager. I love it. But I’ve had a few experiences recently that helped me realize how boring “good” dog training really can be.
This morning, I did an assembly this morning at a school that’s attended by a young girl with a service dog. The dog does a lot of cool stuff. If she runs off, he will find her. If she has a panic attack, he will help her calm down. He makes sure she doesn’t go into tantrums or fits. But 99% of what the dog does on a typical day is heel calmly by her side, lay down next to her desk, and come when she asks him to come. That’s what he does, day in and day out.
The assembly was primarily geared toward telling kids to leave the dog alone during school. The school didn’t want students to be petting the dog, talking the dog, or feeding the dog. Afterwards, I opened it up for a few questions. A kid raised his hand and said, “All right, can you show us the cool stuff the dog does?” And I said…well, not really!
This dog’s trainers put thousands of dollars and tons of time and effort into working with him, and at the end of the day he looks pretty boring. All that training went into having a companion that can simply hang out and be a help when needed, and that quality makes him an amazing service animal.
Today I want to write a little bit about context, an important element of training that a lot of owners simply don’t consider at all.
Let me illustrate this concept with a very easy example: a dog that sits. A lot of people come to us and say “My dog’s trained, he knows how to sit.” So we tell him to sit, and he won’t. The reason is simple. The dog will only sit under contexts A, B, C, and D.
Context A might be the dog sitting in the living room with a treat. Context B is the dog in the backyard with a treat. Context C is the dog in the living room with no treat. Context D is the dog on a walk with no distractions. These are all of the contexts in which the dog can obey the “sit” command. When you’re on context R, however—perhaps inside a strange training facility that’s full of distractions—then the dog won’t do it.
This is the reality behind most training that I see. Owners make the mistake of only training for a few contexts. They don’t teach their dog what I call “functional obedience”: the ability to obey commands in the real world. It’s important that as owners we look at may different contexts.
It’s impossible to cover every possible context, but it’s good to hit as many as you can. If you make those contexts as challenging as possible during training, then unexpected events in your dog’s day become very easy to handle.
That’s why my company does a lot of group sessions. In these gatherings, we might ask some dogs to lie down while the rest of the dogs walk over them. That’s something that may not happen in the real world, but the more you vary the context then the easier it will be when you take your dog to the coffee shop and someone carrying a baby steps over them. This is the type of training we always recommend: think of everything that might happen, and plan for it. Plan weird stuff too, so that you can work the dog through those challenges.
A good trainer recognizes context. Understand that a dog who isn’t obedient under most contexts isn’t actually a trained dog. If your dog is only rained in a few contexts, it won’t make your life any easier. You need to train for just about anything you can think of. Only then will your dog
Today I want to dispel two of the main myths I see related to dog training commands, both of which are related to the language that we use.
The first myth I see all the time is that some commands are better or worse than others. In a sense this idea is true, but not in the way that most owners understand it. For example, we frequently see German Shepherd or Rottweiler owners who wonder if they should train their dog in German. “I heard they learn better that way,” they often say. Actually, we often have owners who want to train their dog in another language. (It’s often German, but not always.)The answer I give them? “It doesn't matter.”
A few days ago I saw a dog trainer joking on Facebook about a client with a Russian dog who said that their commands weren't working because they weren’t speaking to it in Russian. We all had a chuckle about that.
But this idea is a reality: many owners think that language makes a difference. It doesn’t. I’ve trained dogs in English, German, Czech, Spanish, Greek, Russian, and more over the years, and I can tell you that it doesn't matter what language you train the dog in.
The second myth, which is conventional wisdom to a lot of owners, is that you need to use the exact same words every time you give a command. Sometimes I’ll be in a session with a husband and wife where the husband says “down” and the wife says “lie down.” It’s not uncommon for the husband to say, “Hey! We’ve got to be on the same page and use the same word, otherwise the dog will never understand.”
Here’s the thing: dogs are smarter than that. They can learn two—or ten!—words for the same behavior. There isn’t too much of a difference between “sit” and “sit down.” In a perfect world you’d want to use the same command, but it isn’t that big of a deal if you’re using one command and another person is using a different one.
As time goes on, my dogs tend to understand “go lie down” just as well as they understand “down.” Sometimes they’ll even start to understand the other languages that I train other dogs in. A dog can even learn different commands from the same person, because they’re so much more focused on physical communication than verbal.
What is important? The action that goes with the commands. This is the area where a husband and wife not being on the same page can actually cause problems. Backing up your words is what matters.
We always tell our clients about the “obedience formula.” Here’s how it goes: first, give one free command with no correction or food. Just say it. If the dog obeys that command, then reinforce with some praise. If they disobey, then follow through instead of getting upset. That might mean one of a dozen different things, from guiding your dog with the leash if he doesn't know better to correcting the e-collar if he is willfully disobeying.
Today’s article is going to break a few hearts. Every time I talk about the topic I’m about the delve into I feel awful, because I’m destroying someone’s idea about their dog. But I think that it’s crucial for people to understand.
The myth I’m going to bust today is the idea that your dogs will protect you. In a real scenario, your dog probably won’t protect you. We do a lot of protection training, teaching dogs to protect a home or car or from muggings, and owners often call us to say things like: “I have a German Shepherd, and I know if push comes to shove he’s going to take care of me. I just want to make sure that he has the training to do it well.” That’s the phrase I hear a lot: that if my dog had to, he would certainly protect me.
The overwhelming majority of German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Rottweilers won’t actually protect their owners. Plenty of these dogs will bark at a window or vehicle. They’ll put on a show, but very few will actually engage another human when their own safety is on the line. That flies in the face of what most people think about their dogs, because so many owners are convinced that their dog would protect them.
We test many dogs, and the overwhelming majority of them won’t perform that way in real-life scenarios. Out of a hundred German Shepherds, one or two—if you’re lucky—will show a degree of protectiveness. There’s a lot of reasons for this tendency.
To actually engage a human being is a very scary thing for a dog. Most dog bites are born from fear. Dogs bite people all the time, most dog bites are born from fear. It’s a terrifying thing to engage a person. When confronted, the dog is normally at the end of his rope and feels like he has no other choice—so he bites. But that bite doesn't come from a confident urge to protect its family.
Now, I’m not saying that protective dogs don't exist. You can still see news stories about dogs that protected their families or homes. But there’s a reason why it’s on the news: because it doesn't happen very much! When push comes to shove, most dogs won’t protect. They’ll either run away or sit and bark, even if someone comes into your home or starts attacking you. That’s just the reality.
In this post, I want to offer some words of caution about the concept of management, a term that is often used by dog trainers. All this means is setting up an environment where your dog can have success.
We work with a lot of dogs who have aggression problems, and can often do an enormous amount to help these dogs get over their issue. But eventually, we may reach a point where we see a diminishing returns. Let’s say that the dog does very well in situations A, B, and C, but scenario L is something like being on a paved path and seeing another dog charging toward them. Even if the dog does perfectly in so many scenarios where they used to be aggressive, this is completely different. It’s a lot to ask a dog not to be aggressive when another animal is charging at them.
That’s a situation where management would be key. What does good management mean? For starters, it means recognizing that the scenario at hand is too much for your dog to handle. In this specific circumstance, you might get off the path ten or fifteen feet, have your dog lie down, and shoo away the other dog if it comes further toward you. Your responsibility as an owner is to manage the scenario. This is just one example of management. But putting your dogs in scenarios where they’re more likely to have success and make good choices is an important part of long-term success.
Now, there is a problem with management, and it has to do with dog trainers. If you’re in Utah, of course, I’d recommend that you come to us! But for the people reading this all over the country, I want to warn you about something to watch out for when you’re choosing a dog trainer: many trainers actually manage more than they train!
In this post, I’d like to talk a little about crate training benchmarks. Any time that clients are crate training their dog, they always ask me when they don't need to continue using it any more.
I always say not to rush it, because the crate is a great tool. I call it “the silent teacher.” It shows a dog how to be calm and relaxed, so that ideally they’re still calm outside the crate. They’ve spent time building up that understanding. The concept easily transfers.
But there are certain moments that I look for along the way, benchmarks that tell me I can give the dog a little more freedom. The first freedom I’ll give a dog outside the crate is overnight when we’re sleeping. I’ll never let the dog be loose in the house when I’m out of the house running errands—only when we’re sleeping.
Why? Because it’s a very small step. Ideally, the dog’s been sleeping in the crate for months. Once we get to the point where the dog is not sleeping in the crate but isn’t supervised. No one’s training while they’re sleeping. You can’t! (At least, I can’t!) So that’s the first time that I allow the dog to be outside of the crate unsupervised. On a certain level, this should never be completely unsupervised. If I start hearing noises, I might wake up and find the dog getting into the trash or misbehaving.
Generally, the first time I let a dog sleep outside the crate is at nine or ten months. Again, these are just rules of thumb; every dog is different. I’ve seen plenty of dogs move out of the crate before that benchmark and be absolutely fine, but I’ve seen many more who haven't done well. On the early end, nine or ten months is a good rule. I might move the benchmark later for a dog who’s hyper or mischievous, just to allow for a little more training. Most dogs, however, can be safely moved out of the crate at nine to ten months.
Flooding. No, I’m not speaking about what’s been happening in Louisiana and Texas lately—I’m talking about a psychological term for something that happens when you deal with a lot of stress.
If you read my previous blog post about counter-conditioning, I mentioned that it can only get you so far when dealing with a dog’s fear. Maybe the threshold is too big, maybe the dog’s fear is too big, maybe the dog doesn’t have a large enough motivator. It’s not feasible or realistic to use counter-conditioning through the entire process in those cases.
However, flooding is often useful where counter-conditioning leaves off. Flooding is a tool that we use to help dogs, sometimes properly and sometimes improperly. It’s essentially saying to the dog: “Here’s something you’re afraid of and you can’t run away from it. What are you going to do?” It’s been called “immersion therapy” as well, and has also been performed with many human subjects over the years.
When the mind is confronted with something that’s terrifying or nerve-wracking, it has two options: adapt or die. Of course, there are a few other options like fighting, fleeing, or avoidance. But let’s say that the opportunity to fight isn’t there and that the opportunity to flee has been taken away. In that situation, the dog can either adapt or die. I know that sounds extreme, but I don’t mean it in that way: you and your dog aren’t actually going to die. In theory, someone could be put into a room of snakes and be so terrified that they have a heart attack and die. But in reality, flooding won’t cause death.
What can flooding cause? Adaptation! When I say “adaptation,” all I mean is the process of learning how to cope with stress. In the example I used in my last blog I talked about a dog who was afraid of men, especially men who tried to touch or pet it. So we talked about counter-conditioning, having the man move and then feed the dog over and over. But the dog is also afraid of men making a sudden movement in the house.
In this post, I’d like to speak about a little-known dog training strategy: counter-conditioning. I was working with a client today whose dog has a lot of fear-based issues. We always start tackling this problem with obedience and structure, which go to the root of the problem. This dog needs to have a calmer mind, so that’s a big part of what we’re working to develop. Even with only two sessions under our belt, this strategy is really helping. We’ve been mapping out some strategies to use long-term, and I realized these were some great strategies that I should be sharing with you!
Essentially, counter-conditioning consists of associating something positive with an area of fear. The early scientists who discovered this philosophy helped a young boy conquer his fear of rabbits. They started by holding the rabbit a certain distance away and allowing the boy to eat his food. Gradually, the rabbit got closer. The boy enjoyed eating, so he associated the rabbit with pleasure and got over his fear.
We counter-condition a dog in a similar way: by associating something positive with one of the dog’s fears. The idea behind counter-conditioning is finding a dog’s threshold. You want to figure out how much of a stimulus they can take before they get scared. In the example I’m going to use in this post, this dog is afraid of a variety of things, including men. Maybe it’s a man putting his hand over the dog to pet it. Maybe it’s simply a man being in the room.
In this post, I’d like to talk a little about how to choose a dog. This is a question I get a lot, especially since we do plenty of service dog training. People hear that labs are good service dogs, so they get a lab. The reality? Not every lab can handle a service dog’s job. Sometimes people do their research and figure out that a German Shepherd is right for their lifestyle, so they go out and get any Shepherd they can find. These owners place too much importance on the breed, because the breed book says that the dog will be a certain way.
Now, those breed books have some general things correct, but a lot of things very wrong. All dogs are individuals, so within a hundred German Shepherds you’ll find a huge variety of temperament, character, personality, courage, fear, and so on. So what are you looking for in a new dog? The older the dog is, the more you can tell about its character. We can tell some things about puppies, of course, but not a ton. You want to do your best whether you're rescuing an older dog or buying a puppy. There are a few characteristics that I always want to look for.
One of those characteristics is sociability. We’ve all heard this story: “We were going along at the shelter, and this dog was huddled in the back corner and didn't want to come out for anybody. We felt so sad for him that we rescued him.” I’ve heard that a lot. There’s no problem in doing that if you have a big heart, but you need to understand what you're getting into. If your dog doesn't want human contact and is constantly trying to get away from you, it’s not going to be a good companion for your family.
In a previous post I spoke a bit about my family vacation in Flathead Lake, Montana. We stayed in a beautiful house with a little dock and an orchard. This morning I sat on the dock being very quiet, trying to blend into the background, and watching the deer in the orchard and the birds diving into the water. This beautiful setting is the scene for a story that made me laugh, and which I’d like to relate to you here.
Yesterday, my family was hanging out in the house and my wife suggested that we go down to swim at the dock. It was our first full day of vacation, so no one knew if the water was cold, warm, or somewhere in the pleasant middle. I had to finish an email and get changed, so I told them I’d be down in ten minutes. I also had a massive, raging headache, so I popped a few aspirin. Ten minutes later I walked down the steps and walked over to the water to see all four of my kids sitting on the dock with their towels, huddling and shivering. They said to me, “Dad, get in the water. It’s amazing, it’s so warm. Just jump in!” If it was so great, I asked them, then why weren’t they in it? But they told me, “Oh, we just got out for a second. You’re going to love it!”
I thought to myself, “Well, the sun’s out and the lake is shallow. Maybe the water is warm!” But they kept insisting over and over how amazing the water was. Something was fishy. I turned to my wife to ask her what was going on, and she held up her camera and showed me a video of three out of four of the kids jumping in all at once. The video cracked me up, because as soon as they jumped in they started screaming their heads off! That’s where the video went blank, because my wife turned off the camera to pull the kids out of the water. My kids were trying to trick me after all!
But I decided that even with that, I was going to jump in. The water was crystal clear. How often would I get to take advantage of something this amazing? So headache and all, I jumped right in. It was cold at first, but as I swam around more it started to become more comfortable. It was still chilly, but also extremely refreshing. I noticed that in about two minutes my headache away. I was swimming around, feeling wonderful, having an amazing time.
This past week, I was out on a morning walk while on vacation in Flathead Lake in Montana, which is an absolutely stunning area. On morning walks you can see deer and birds diving into the water to catch fish, and our lakefront house had a beautiful dock. Yesterday on a hike we saw some bighorn sheep. I’m caught by how gorgeous and amazing this place is.
As I’ve chatted with the people who live in this area, I get the sense that after a while it ceases to be novel. For me, the beauty of this place is novel. I love being on or close to the water, but for some reason I live in Utah—where even getting to water means packing lunch and taking a long drive. For the thousands of people who live around Flathead Lake (which is in Glacier National Park, just south of the Canadian border), being on the water isn’t anything special. They live there! And while they love and enjoy their home, as time goes on the novelty wears off.
There was a time years ago when I worked for a dog training company and the novelty of dogs began to wear off for me. I felt like I was just an assembly-line trainer, and wasn’t finding opportunities to challenge myself. When I did that, I felt the novelty slip away. And then, about twelve years ago, I thought that I was done with dogs. While I still wanted to own them, I didn’t think that I wanted to work with them professionally. I was out of training for a few months. But then I started my own business, after realizing that the passion and novelty were still there. It was my format that had discouraged me from loving my job.
I want to talk about playing with your dog, a topic that I encountered several times just this week. Earlier today, I had a conversation with a client who’s getting a very good working dog from a Midwest breeder. The breeder called me to say, “I understand that you're going to be doing some of the training for this dog, and I’d just like to talk about your methods.” We had a forty-five minute conversation, and when all was said and done I realized that about twenty minutes of that was spent talking about play.
I also have a nice working dog who’s doing a test run at a client’s home this weekend. I wasn’t going to be there when the client was going to pick up the dog, so I made a video to impart some information to them. Most of that information, I noticed, was about play. My family is going on vacation. I was making a video for my brother-in-law, who’s going to be staying with my dog, and a big part of those instructions were about play. All of these events made me realize the importance of play. I’ve known this for a long time, but I’ve never sat down and put all of my ideas out there. Here’s my attempt to do just that!
My last post on this topic had to do with the general idea of the “system” and the four essential elements of puppy training. (If you didn’t catch that post, then go back and read it first.) As time goes on, I’ll be putting out more of these systems articles. Today I want to talk about a system that probably affects you: house training your dog.
This is a tough topic, and it’s not just one that affects puppy owners. I was speaking this morning with the owner of a two-year-old German Shepherd who still wasn't house trained, and I talk to people with four-year-old Shi Tzus and six-year old Chihuahuas who aren’t house trained. It’s obviously a difficult process—so why not use a system? Why try to reinvent the wheel and come up with your own strategy when you could opt for a system that has been proven to work, time and time again? My house training system has been used thousands of times, both with my own personal clients and with the people who use my DVDs and books. I know that this system always works quickly and effectively.
To explain further, let’s outline the four components of my house training system. Now, some of these components may turn more important than others, while you may not end up using some of them at all. But every dog, on some level, needs these elements to be present in order to be properly house trained. Your dog’s temperament will determine whether you need to enforce all of them or not.
Recently it’s become very popular for owners to put their dogs to work. I’m all in favor of this and believe it’s a wonderful way to help focus your dog, but it’s also something that has been greatly misunderstood in many different ways. I’d like to use this post to clear up some of those misunderstandings.
Before we dive into this topic, let me first define what I mean by a “job.” Many owners come to me saying that they have a Border Collie or a German Shepherd who needs to have a job. I think this started with Cesar Milan, who’s big on teaching dogs to work. Since then, other popular dog trainers have brought this concept further into the cultural vernacular.
I think that this concept is wonderful in theory, and that we should always look for opportunities to make it a reality. However, I think that owners often get confused because they want to give their dog a job instead of training it. It’s not uncommon for me to get a phone call from an owner who has a Border Collie or an Australian Shepherd or another breed that often excels at agility. They’ll say something along the lines of: “We need to deal with his aggression, so we’re trying to decide whether to do training with you or get him into agility so he can have a job.”
In this post I want to talk about how to have your dog greet other dogs and people, whether they’re on- or off-leash. This is a question that I hear a lot from clients here in Utah, who like to go out on the trails. Over the years I’ve developed a formula over the years to facilitate this situation, and encapsulate that formula into one single, solitary word. Cool, right? In theory, it’s very easy too. What’s the word?
“Don’t!”
I know, maybe you were waiting for that. But my answer is always the same: don’t let your dog meet other dogs on a trail walk, on- or off-leash. This might sound a little extreme, like I don't want your dog to have fun. Now, I’ll admit that I might be a little more conservative on this topic than some other trainers might be. But that’s purely because I’ve witnessed and heard about so many nightmares that I don’t see any reason for allowing your dog to do this. Let’s devote some time to figuring out why this situation so frequently turns into a problem.
Dogs are social creatures, but the overwhelming majority of them haven't learned proper social skills. There’s a difference between being social and being able to behave socially. Humans are social creatures too, but that certainly doesn't mean that every human learns social skills. Plus, humans learn these skills at different rates; some people act better in social situations, while some behave worse.
Today I want to give you some harsh words about a phenomenon that I see a lot. In fact, two separate examples of this issue had already surfaced by ten o’clock this morning!
Here’s what I want to tell you: no matter what your parents told you when you were a kid, there is no magical farm where dogs with problems go to live out the rest of their days, jumping through the grass and playing in streams and chasing butterflies through a meadow. That place doesn't exist. I know a lot of parents tell their kids that it exists when Rusty goes off to be put down, but it’s not real.
Why is this on my mind today? Because, as I mentioned before, two instances of it popped up today. The first was someone who emailed me to ask me to place their dog for them. The second was a man on Facebook who posted something along the lines of: “I have a dog who’s been fighting my other dog. She killed a skunk and a chicken, and I really need to get rid of her. Is there someplace that will take her?” Essentially, these people wanted someone to take care of their problem.
I’m not downplaying this burden because I understand the pain and the struggle that comes along with a dog whose problems you don’t know how to solve. But people need to ask themselves this question: if the owner and family member—who presumably loves the dog, and has attempted to teach him, and has spent money on his vet bills and food—is not willing to put in whatever it takes to make sure their dog goes to the right place, then why would anyone else do so?
In this post, I’d like to talk about the speed with which you train your dog. This morning I was working with a client whose dog is learning some service dog work in public. The dog is young—only about seven months—so she isn't fully ready to take on her job just yet. She’s been coming in for about a month, and today her owners saw her working for the first time since she started training. Their comment? “I can’t believe how different she is in just a month!”
For an exercise, we took the dog went into a giant, very busy thrift store that was full of all sorts of distractions: tons of people, weird smells, slippery floors. It was one of the dog’s first times being handled by her new owner. All these things (young dog, new handler, distracting setting) would typically converge against you in your efforts to have a well-trained and obedient dog, but she did phenomenally well! There were areas that could be improved, of course, but the owner thought she was great.
This incident reminded me that balanced or stabilized training is faster—and that faster can often mean good. If you juxtapose balanced training—a type of training which uses positive motivation combined with proper correction—to the new school of “pure positivity” training, you’ll see that balanced training moves faster. That’s because when all you’re doing is offering your dog treats, you need to work at a very long threshold from distractions. For example, if you’re using treats without corrections to get your dog to go into a store, it might take you many months to get there.
Here’s how a “positive training” situation might work: you take the dog a hundred feet from the entrance to the store. Your dog sees people and is super excited, but you need to try to keep his interest. He’s not excited about treats when he’s that close to so many people! So you have to go back to a hundred and ten feet. Then you get down to a hundred, then ninety. If you’re trying to fix your dog’s behavior at the door, you might need to do tons of repetitions far away from the doorbell, gradually get closer, and eventually reach a point where your dog is comfortable with knocking. If your dog is aggressive when he sees something two hundred feet away, then you have to start at two hundred and five feet and slowly work your way down.
It’s come to my attention in recent years that very few people really comprehend the differences between service dogs, therapy dogs, and emotional support dogs. I have other videos and materials on my website that contain this information, but I didn’t have one piece of content that simply outlined the difference. Since this is a question I answer so much at work, I thought I’d tackle the subject here as well!
There are a few differences and legal distinctions between these three kinds of dogs, which is why it’s important to get them straight. People often interchange these words without actually understanding what they mean: they might say “therapy dog” when they mean “service dog,” or “service dog” when they mean “emotional support dog.” So if you’re looking into owning one of these animals, it’s imperative that you clearly understand those differences.
A service dog has been trained to provide at least one service that mitigates a disability. Basically, they help people with disabilities live their lives. Some service dogs are trained to open automatic doors or pick up cell phones and keys for people in wheelchairs. Some can smell high or low blood pressure, or help visually impaired people navigate the world. All service dogs dog have been trained with “task work” to help a person with some kind of disability.
Because of these responsibilities, all service dogs also have various rights. They can ride on planes and go into grocery stores or restaurants, and they don't need registration or certification to do so. In fact, any advertised registration that you may find for a service dog online is fake. There’s no such thing as a real certification, because the government has specified in the ADA that you don't need one. You don't even legally need a vest for the dog in order to go into a store.
In upcoming weeks, I’m going to devote a handful of posts to a topic that’s very important to me: systems.
What I’m talking about when I use the word “system” is any process that we go through to achieve a desired result. Nearly every profession has its own set of systems. When you go to a restaurant to get a hamburger—whether it’s a McDonald’s or a high-end burger joint—there will be a system with which they take our order, send it to the kitchen, and cook it. That’s the case when you’re building a car, or getting a home loan. There is always a system to make things happen smoothly and properly.
For some reason, however, dog owners often don’t apply this principle when training their dogs. Instead, they get stuck constantly playing catch-up. As soon as their dog starts to do something undesirable, they immediately start wondering what they should do about it. They spend very little time thinking about a systematic approach in order to solve problems.
For this reason, an overwhelming number of dog trainers in the country are single-operated companies. One person gets good at dog training, but because they don't systematize it, they can’t teach it to others. They might teach their clients how to solve something, but they can’t teach someone else how to be a good trainer.
One of the reasons my company has had success over the years, and been able to hire other trainers, is our ability to systematize approaches. Every system has to make room for customization and making each client’s experience unique, but if you don’t have a system to solving problems with your dog then you’ll do a lot of wheel spinning. A system allows you to collect your thoughts, organize your efforts, and push forward in the right direction.
Today I want to talk about a topic that’s a little personal: choosing to do more than you need to do when you’re training your dog.
My first dog’s name was Heidi, and it took me years of begging to get her. My parents weren’t into them, my mom was afraid of them, and nobody else wanted to deal with the mess. But I begged until I was fourteen years old and we moved to a house that had an acre of property, and then along came Heidi!
Around the same time that Heidi came to live with us, I was able to start my apprenticeship with a local dog trainer in Northern California. So I got into dog training very quickly as a kid. I was addicted to how cool it was to work as a team, to get my dog to listen to me, and to have such a strong bond with an animal. I thought it was amazing.
I was so gung-ho when first learning to train that I did a lot of crazy things. As an example, I often worked on a sit stay on a picnic table at a park. There’s absolutely no reason for a dog to jump up on a picnic table, but I did it anyway. I would get Heidi to sit for five minutes on that table. When it rained, we worked on down stays in puddles. We did down leash heeling around weird distractions. Basically, we did a lot of things that weren’t necessarily “real life.” I never needed Heidi to sit on a table or a puddle, but I went way further than I needed to.
In my work, I frequently field questions like: “When can I stop using the dog crate?” or “At what point do I not need to use the leash?” or “Can I stop using this e-collar yet?” I understand the thought process behind this questions. Training a dog isn't necessarily easy, and there is a lot of work and time involved. Cutting up treats, putting on the training collar, and handling the leash can be a bit of a hassle, and they’re outside of how we would like to live with our dogs.
Let’s face it: most people would love to just go on walks, cuddle, and laugh at their dog’s funny quirks. They want their dog’s companionship, and using the crate and leash all the time can feel like a distraction from that. I totally understand this mindset. Sometimes we want to jump to the point where the dog is trained and we can relax in “maintenance mode.” We just want happy, fun coexistence with our pals!
But I’m always trying to help owners understand that they shouldn't jump the gun. That’s one of the biggest problems I see: owners who teach their dog a concept and immediately get rid of the tool that helped them get there. For example, an owner will often use a crate for a few months until their dog is no longer using the bathroom in the house. Then—boom! No more crate. It’s cold turkey, because it’s a hassle to have the crate sitting in their living room and they didn't like putting their dog in there in the first place.
This creates huge problems! The dog might understand the concept of not peeing in the house, but it isn’t hardwired into his brain yet. If he understands the rules and you’ve used some kind of tool to get him there—like a crate or a leash—then removing that tool often causes the dog to backslide, often immediately. His behavior was merely learned, not yet engrained into his mind.
Today I’d like to address a difficult question that I’ve had many times over the years: high-energy dogs who have been injured and need to be off their feet for an extended period of time.
Sometimes this situation is very simple—as is the case when a dog is neutered or spayed—and generally require a short four or five day recovery. Most people can manage to power through that. The strategies I’ll describe now can apply to those situations, but I’m speaking more toward people whose dogs have had an invasive surgery, broken a leg, or torn a muscle—injuries that require several weeks of “down time.”
When your dog needs down time but doesn't want to have it, there are two things I usually recommend. The first is mental activity. Most of the mental exercises I usually recommend revolve around food or toys, but if your dog needs to be resting it can be tough to employ a toy. You can, however, do a lot of things with food that engage the mind but don’t do much with the body.
It’s especially effective to utilize the nose. See, there’s a bond between your dog’s nose and his brain. It’s a thick, strong connection, and keeping the nose active sucks power from the brain. All the dog’s focus goes straight to his nose. So if your active dog needs to be down, try to engage some of that energy through his nose.
Have you ever thought about how pressure and stress can benefit your dog?
As humans, we tend to label “stress” a four-letter-word. But if you really think about it, there is no such thing as growth in the living world without it! The plant that springs out of the earth has to push forward through difficulty to get itself out of the soil, fight for resources like air and water and sunlight. In pushing through those stresses, it survives. If it cannot cope or adapt to the pressures that its environment gives it, then it will die.
You can look at any creature in the animal kingdom—chipmunks and killer whales and everything in between—and see the same pattern. Growth can only be seen after pressure and stress do their work, because the natural world never just hands you growth. We humans like to think of ourselves as far more civilized, but the same is true for us: there is no such thing as growth without stress. When a kid feels the pressure to succeed, she might go to college and work hard there. Perhaps she makes success for herself, and perhaps she doesn’t. That’s life!
Even though any sort of short- or long-term growth can only come about as a result of stress, we still need to pay attention to our stress level in order to stay healthy. If we don’t have any way of turning off our pressures or relieving the stresses we feel, then we go nuts! Neglecting to come up with ways to adapt to the stress can lead to serious problems. The same is true of every other living thing: if you can’t cope, you won’t thrive. In the animal kingdom, you might even die.
In front of me right now I have four cheap, simple bracelets, and I want to tell you the story of how I received them. When I was at work today—and very busy—a young woman walked in, came over to the desk, and started talking to me. To be honest, I didn't understand much of what she said, but I did gather that she was from Thailand and that she’d only been in the country for a week. She opened up a binder, and inside there were bracelets, necklaces, and other kinds of jewelry. She had a laminated paper with her that explained the story of the pieces, but frankly I was too busy to really listen to what she was saying. The main thing I gathered is that she was from Thailand and was raising some money, and that she had jewelry for sale.
At first I was tempted to tell her I didn't have time, but I was immediately struck by this young woman’s work ethic. How many of today’s eighteen year old Americans would ever go cold-calling to businesses attempting to sell trinkets? You’d need to twist some arms—maybe even threaten jail time—in order to get the kids in my neighborhood to do something like that! It struck me how monumental it was for someone who didn't speak the language to walk into a store, look me in the eye, calmly explain what she was doing even though I didn't understand very well, and attempt to make a transaction. That’s pretty amazing!
Now, I speak a tiny bit of Portuguese, and just thinking about doing something like this in that language was mind blowing. What this young woman was doing amazed me. So I almost turned her away, but recognizing how awesome this was, I grabbed these four bracelets for my daughters. To be honest they’ll probably be broken within four hours, but it was less about the gift and more about rewarding the behavior that found its way to me. I just felt that this young woman needed to be rewarded. I’ll spend $20 to reward a work ethic lik
In my community there’s a hillside covered in dead, brown grass. There are a few shades of green on the hill, but they’re only there because of the community’s efforts to water this dead hill. I live directly across the street, and every time our guests see the sprinklers come on in the evening, they get confused. “Why waste so much water?” they ask. “Why water a dead hill?”
Well, why does the community do this? Because if they didn’t, then there would be no green on the hill whatsoever. All of the grass would be completely dead—and would immediately turn into a tinderbox. Just over that hill are thousands of homes, where tens of thousands of people live. If this hillside were to catch fire, it could potentially harm many people and destroy lots of homes. The community takes various measures to prevent this from ever happening, such as routinely cutting the grass and watering even the dead patches. That hillside, without the maintenance it receives, could quickly destroy many acres and lives. However, the community puts down water and keeps the soil wet, and as a result it’s much less likely that a hill fire occurs.
Watering dead grass seems like a ridiculous concept, but it’s one that I constantly encourage my dog training clients to do. Now, I don’t care too much about my clients’ landscaping. Rather, I ask my clients to do a lot of little things to prevent their dogs from potentially turning into a “tinderbox.” If I’ve helped a dog with aggression, then I know that if his owner doesn't get him to perform daily place commands and walk properly a leash, there could be negative consequences.
Today I want to make a distinction between intelligence and drive. These are two very different concepts, but they are often confused with each other to a certain degree. People often have incorrect expectations for their dogs based on this misunderstanding.
About eight years ago I was invited to do a demonstration with my dog, Rocco. He was a great protection dog, and I was asked by a rescue dog event to come and show off his protection abilities. I had a client put on a big bite suit and let Rocco attack him. It was a lot of fun, and was witnessed by thousands of people. After the event, people came up to me and emailed me to say things like “I’d really like for my dog to be able to do that too.” Unfortunately I never worked with any of those dogs, because none of them were actually capable.
Time and time again, they also added that their dog was very intelligent. A man approached me after the event and said that he was sure his dog could do the same things that Rocco had. My question for him was, “Okay, so what about his drive and character makes you think that he could?” His response? That his dog was really intelligent.
Today I’d like to share a phrase that I use quite a lot with my clients: “The more proactive your dog is in fixing their mistake, the sooner they won’t make that mistake.”
Let me bring in an example to illustrate this concept: leash pulling. We work on this problem a lot with clients, because nearly every dog I meet for the first time is pulling on his leash. We teach a method called “the Crazy Man Method.” When we’re walking and the dog moves too far ahead, I do a 180-degree turn and give a little tug on the leash. If the dog goes right, I go left. If the dog goes left, I go right. If the dog goes forward, I go backward. After a while, the dog realizes “I’ve got to watch out for this guy, he’s crazy! If I go this way, he goes that way. He’s nuts!” Soon he realizes that if he stays put, then he can pay attention.
The Crazy Man Method is great, and it gets most dogs eighty percent of the way to obedience. But there are some dogs who still nudge forward a little bit as they’re walking, even after doing this method for a few weeks. In these cases, I start teaching something called the Easy Command: as the dog moves forward, I pause and use the leash to give some correction and prompt the dog to physically (and mentally) turn around, and then I wait for the dog to get back to my side. Then we go on our way.
In this post, I’d like to write a little about the present tense verb.
No, I’m not talking about English class! What I would like to speak about is a misconception I have noticed among dog owners. They’ll say things like: “I come home and I know that my dog pooped on the floor. He knows that it’s wrong because he hangs his head and walks around the house.” Or: “He keeps doing this even though he’s learned better. Why?” At its core, this is a present tense verb problem.
See, your ability to form either a positive or a negative association with your dog can only occur in the present tense. If I ask my dog to sit and he sits, I can feed him a treat, tell him “good job,” or give him a pat on the head. In the moment I can tell him he did well, and he can learn that sitting on command is a good thing. If I catch him sitting ten minutes later and I praise him again, the present tense verb is still “he sits.” In that case, I’m not praising him for the act of putting his rear on the ground, but for the act of staying there.
Today I want to write a little about the sum of your friends. There’s a statement on this topic that I’ve heard many times over the years, almost always from motivational speakers and others of that variety. Now, I know that sometimes motivational speakers are just trying to sell a book or a course, so I don’t know if the statement is completely accurate. Obviously you can’t speak in absolutes, but I believe this is the truth in most cases. I’ll paraphrase the statement here:
“In life, your income will be proportionate to the average of the five people you hang out with most.”
What does that mean? Basically, that if your five best friends earn $30,000 a year, you’ll probably make the same amount. If the five people you choose to hang out with the most are making $500,000 a year, however, you will probably land somewhere around that yourself. The reasoning behind this—which is probably more anecdotal than anything—is that when you hang out with the same type of person over and over, they tend to make certain decisions and think in certain ways. Often that makes an impact on you, and you influence them in turn. In short, everyone begins to influence each other. By hanging out with these types of people, you end up making roughly the same salary as they do.
Tomorrow, I’m going to the dentist for a root canal. I’ve never had one before. I feel lucky that, in my entire life, I’ve only had one cavity. All those years ago, when I was eighteen, I got the cavity filled and then I didn’t think about it for the next fifteen or twenty years. As time has gone on, around that filling in the back of my mouth, the tooth has started to decay.
This is perfectly normal. In fact, it’s probably been going on for a long time without my awareness. I go back in my mind, I’ve been wondering when I started to notice the pain. I have brief memories from as long as a year ago of drinking a cold or warm drink, or eating something sugary, and noticing that it hurt. But then it went away, and I didn't think about it. Then one day, out of the blue, I was in enormous pain! I realized I had to act right then because it was hurting like crazy. So of course I went to the dentist, who told me that I needed a root canal. I’m a little terrified at the idea of needles on my gums, so I’m not looking forward to it at all!
Here’s where I’m going with this: I see that this pattern a lot in the way that people approach their dog ownership endeavors. They often notice small things occurring with their dog, but don’t recognize their significance. I didn't register a bit of tooth pain every now and then, and if I did notice it I just didn't attach any meaning to it. Many dog owners are the same. They believe that their dog is doing fine—he’s not destroying things, chewing on stuff, or peeing in the house—but maybe he pulls on the leash. Or the dog seems fine most of the time, but loses control every time someone rings the doorbell. The owners don't like it, but they don't do anything about it. It’s just something they deal with when it happens.
Today I want to talk about freedom for your dog. This is an idea that often presents me with something of an idealogical conundrum, but I’m going to take the plunge because I think that the way we think about freedom has huge implications on our dog training.
Now, I certainly don’t want to get into anything political, but I’m a believer in freedom. I think that I was born a free person. But I think very, very differently when it comes to dogs in domestic situations. Why? Because a domestic dog just doesn't have the ability to process his surroundings in a rational way, unless he’s taught how. Freedom is something that our dogs need to learn. We can’t just give it away to them.
The idea of freedom can show itself in many different forms. For instance, most of us want our dogs to have freedom around the house. We want to be able to sit and watch television, eat a meal, clean the bedroom, or read a book without worrying about our dogs. We like the idea of our dogs wandering the house freely, without peeing on the rugs or chewing up our possessions. In short, we want our dogs to make good choices even when they have a level of freedom in the house.
Albert Einstein said a lot of intelligent things, but one of his statements has always particularly stuck out to me. In fact, it’s one of my favorite quotes from anyone, and I think of it frequently in my dog training career. Here it is:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask. For once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
Now, I think a lot about how this idea can help my clients who are dealing with dog issues. My website gets a lot of traffic, and I get questions from people all over the world. I do my best to answer those questions when I can, but I just get too many to answer every single one of them.
There are some questions, however, that I routinely ignore: the ones that don’t even come close to following Einstein’s formula. Now, I’m certainly not saying that you have to be as smart as Einstein in order to ask a question! But I frequently get questions like: “My dog has aggression problems—what do I do?” or “My dog pees in the house—what do I do?” It’s clear that the people asking these kinds of questions have devoted no thought process to it. If they had, then they wouldn’t be asking the question that way in the first place.
My dog Chocolate Chip is currently in heat. Go ahead, gasp in horror! I’m used to it, because I take quite a bit criticism for this. There are a lot of people out there who say that you absolutely must have your dogs spayed or neutered, and the earlier the better.
Before we dive further into this topic, I’d like to offer a quick disclaimer. I don’t want to definitely come out and label either side of this issue right or wrong. I’m not an expert on dog hormones or surgery. What I do want to do is offer a different perspective for you to think about. Often, many veterinarians tell owners what to do without looking at all the information available.
A few studies have come out in recent years which show that neutering and spaying early isn’t actually a good thing. It can allegedly lead to higher rates of cancer, behavioral issues, and other problems. On the surface this seems sensible, and once you dig into the idea a little further it starts to make more and more sense.
Here’s why. When you spay a female dog, you remove her reproductive organs and a large chunk of her endocrine system along with them. Neutering a male dog produces similar results: removing the testicles and their hormones, you also take away many important growth hormones. Think about what might happen if you performed a hysterectomy on a five-year-old girl, or removed the testicles of an adolescent boy. These operations have been done for medical reasons, and they create hormonal imbalances and other health issues that often need to be corrected later. Plus there are many parts of the world where boys are sterilized at a young age, and they tend to develop many physical and mental health issues as a result.
Today I was down at my community lake, which brought to my mind the many times I’ve worked with dogs in the water. I have had lots of clients in the so-called “Sun Belt”—areas such as California, Texas, Arizona, Mexico, and even the south of Spain. Since most of these places are very hot, people who live there either have swimming pools or live on the beach. Naturally, they want their dog to enjoy swimming with them.
Here’s the catch: many of these dogs are German Shepherds or Rottweilers or other protection breeds, dogs who aren't necessarily bred for swimming. In generally, these dogs don't naturally enjoy swimming. Nonetheless, their owners want to make sure that their dog can swim—to ensure their safety if they were to accidentally end up in the water—but to also to enjoy swimming. They just want to be able to take their dogs out to the beach or pool to have some fun.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that I can get almost any dog to enjoy swimming. Do they start out loving it? Absolutely not! Most of them start out wishing that they didn't need to go into the water. But every dog that I’ve trained to swim has ended up being not only a decent swimmer but an enthusiastic one as well.
In this post, I want to talk about breaking the dog training rules. That sounds controversial, but I’m really just referring to the habit of clinging to the first “rule” you hear about a dog training topic. When people want to learn more about dog training, they generally read a book or talk to their trainer to get more information. In most cases, the first information they hear from that first source is what they tend to believe. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, it’s always a good idea to question the information you hear, no matter where it came from. Question the information you get from books about dogs, question anything a trainer tells you about dogs—even question the information I’m giving you right now!
It’s quite common for me to hear: “I’ve got this Blue Heeler, and a guy at work told me that all Blue Heelers are like this.” I tell them that yes, their Blue Heeler might be “like that,” but it could also be something completely different. There is no one stereotype that defines a whole breed. Other people say: “I read this book once, and it said this was how you’re supposed to house train.” Or: “My brother is great with dogs, and he said to do it this way.” When people hear information for the first time, they usually look at it as gospel truth. After that, any new information is seen as a threat to what they’re already thinking and doing.
Of course, there are certain things that I think of as rules. These are principles like: “Don’t slap your dog,” “Don’t feed your dog awful food,” or “You don’t need to scream at your dog to get him to be obedient.” There are plenty of things that are hard and fast. But there are plenty of other things that, as I often say, aren’t a problem unless they’re a problem.
Today, I’ve been hanging out with two of my dogs as well as a few of my clients’ dogs. Watching all of them together got me thinking about multi-dog households. Many of my clients struggle with having moe than one dog in their home. Their dogs get into fights, become destructive, or simply feed off each others’ misbehavior. When someone rings the doorbell, they have two or three dogs barking up the walls rather than just one. That’s enough to drive anyone crazy!
Multi-dog households present unique challenges. I frequently see two dogs from the same household begin to fight. This can happen to dogs who’ve been living together for months or even years. They coexist and seem to be getting along, but one day they suddenly get into a fight. A week or so later they fight again, and then in no time they’re at each others’ throats every day.
This situation occurs because the dogs were only “getting along” under the banner of a lack of control. Their owners weren’t giving much leadership or structure to the dogs, so the only thing that kept the dogs from fighting was the fact that they are friendly animals. There was no strong foundation—so when something in the environment changed, they did not have anything to fall back on. A problem like this requires a lot of difficult work to fix, so I’m not going to focus on that process here. Instead, I’d like to share some of the things you can do to prevent multi-dog issues before they present themselves.
One of the main steps you can take is to implement obedience training for all of your dogs. I know that sounds obvious, but very few people train even one of their dogs—much less the three or four that are living under their roof! Obedience training is very important because dogs need to have that structure to fall back on. If they don’t, they will follow patterns that they choose for themselves. Some dogs are naturally well-behaved, but plenty of others will begin to have issues.
Today I’d like to talk about something I call “bite-sized chunks.” This is a concept I use tot show clients how to bring about complex behavior changes in their dogs.
Now, a complex task for a dog is very different from a complex task for us. If someone were to tell me to go upstairs, grab something out of my bedroom, and bring it back downstairs, I wouldn't think that was a complex task at all. When we’re asked to do something like that, our brain immediately links all the steps together: I need to walk up the staircase, turn at the landing, turn left to enter the bedroom, open the door, pick up an object—and so on. It’s only a few steps. Human brains are good at synthesizing multiple steps of a process, so walking upstairs to grab an object isn’t a complex problem.
For dogs, however, that would be a very complex set of actions. If it’s something that they decide to do, and it’s in their minds already, then it isn’t quite as complex. But if we are attempting to prompt that behavior and associate it with a cue or a command, then we often see that putting all of those steps together is enormously complicated for our dogs. Some will pick it up quickly, but even smart dogs will take a long time to learn how to perform all of those actions reliably and progressively.
Today I’d like to speak about the impact of taking a puppy away from its mother and litter mates too early. I recently spoke with an owner who had done this, having brought her puppy home at about five weeks. While talking with her, I tried to explain some of the complex issues involved in this kind of situation.
In this particular case, the owner had no choice but to bring the puppy home early because its mother had died. Some people do have that choice: they meet a cute puppy who is five or six weeks old, and they’re given the opportunity to take the dog home. Generally, I advise that you not do that. The only way that I would ever recommend that choice is if there is a health issue involved where the puppies can’t be with their mother. In that case, it is what it is: not an ideal scenario, but something you can adapt to.
There are a few big potential issues with taking a dog away from its mother too early. I often see problems with mouthiness. Almost every puppy will nip, but dogs who were separated too early do so excessively. There’s a phenomenon called “bite inhibition” that occurs as the puppies get more mature—past five or six weeks—and start to bite their mother. They explore the world with their mouths, and start biting their litter mates and their mother. The mom will put up with some nipping, but she’ll eventually get to a point where she doesn't want to be bothered any more. So the mother will correct the puppies. In doing so, they begin to realize that they shouldn’t bite too rough or too hard. They can learn this lesson from litter mates as well, as the puppies put each other in their place. Mouthiness and biting can therefore become huge issues if the puppy is taken away from its litter prematurely.
Today, I want to talk about how good you need to be at training in order to train your dog. A lot of people call me to ask whether they can actually train their dog. I always tell them that over the years, I’ve found that consistency will trump talent every time.
Here’s what that means. Sometimes, I have a client who is talented from the moment they take the leash. They read the dog perfectly and handle the leash well—that’s a natural ability. But some of those people go home, watch Netflix on the couch, and never work their dog. A few weeks later, when they come back to us, their dog hasn’t made progress. So while those owners are naturally talented at the tasks we give them, they don’t have the work ethic to follow through. These people will get results if they implement even a little of what we show them, but they often don’t get the amazing results they could achieve if they put in more effort.
On the flip side, we’ve had a lot of clients over the years (no offense if you fall into this category!) who just aren’t talented. Their timing is off, they have two left feet, or they don’t handle the leash well. Of course, this is expected: not everyone is naturally talented. We want these people—along with ourselves and with the people who have a natural skill—to get better. Everyone who is endeavoring to train their dog should be looking to improve their ability, whether you’re an owner who wants to train one dog or a professional who wants to train thousands.
One thing I’ve noticed is this: if the person who isn’t naturally talented consistently works their butt off, they will always outperform the highly talented but inconsistent owner. Of course, the ideal situation is an owner who is both naturally skilled consistent, and hard-working. But if you’re unsure of your abilities, don’t get discouraged!
Recently I’ve been thinking about the difference between simply relaxing and actually shutting down your brain. This topic has been on my mind because of a conversation I had with a client about giving their dog some down time. This was especially necessary in this case because the dog was a service animal who has a very difficult working life and really needs down time. But all dogs can benefit from intentional relaxation.
Owners frequently say things like “Of course my dog has a lot of down time—he’s always sleeping in his bed or lying down on the floor to relax!” Of course lots of dogs do those kinds of things, either on their own or on command. Dogs will naturally lie down, take naps, and rest. That’s all well and good, but oftentimes the dog that’s lying down of his own volition isn’t really shutting down. At any given moment he might decide to get up and walk around, or grab a toy, or investigate what’s happening on the other side of the house. So while your dog might look like he’s taking a nap, is he actually shut down to the point where he is totally calm and relaxed?
This concept doesn't just apply to service dogs, but to working and family dogs as well. All dogs can benefit from the ability to fully shut down their minds. This is why I’m a huge fan of crate training, and use it even when I’m at home with my dogs. Let me explain why in a little more detail.
In this article, I’d like to talk a bit about context—in other words, how how dogs perceive information.
At our company, we do a lot of boot camps. In these camps, both local people from here in Utah or people from out of state bring their dogs to us, and we train the dog and send it home. When I started doing these boot camps, I didn’t understand the concept of context deeply enough to realize that I needed to explain it to everyone. That was a young rookie mistake! So I would train the dog, bring it back to the owners, and tell them: “Here’s how you get it to be obedient. If he isn’t, then make sure you’re doing all these things.”
Owners were always surprised by these specifics. They thought that all they would need to do is say “sit” or “come” and their dog would do it automatically. I had to explain that their dog wasn’t a machine. Just because a dog understands a command in training doesn’t mean that he will automatically obey it for his owner without any kind of practice.
During one of the first bootcamps I did, I seriously annoyed an owner. This was probably nine or ten years ago. I trained a dog for a woman in her twenties who lived at home with her dad, brought the dog back home and showed her how to do all of the things we had practiced. The next day her dad called me and said “The dog isn’t listening to me.” I had to explain that since he hadn’t been present for the go-home session, he hadn’t learned how to handle the dog. His response? “What do you mean, you need to show me how to do things? The dog’s supposed to be trained, he’s supposed to listen!” I realized right then that I had screwed up. Not in the training—the dog was well-trained—but in not explaining context to his owners.
Right now I’m working a lot with a dog named Barney. Barney came to us, for training in Salt Lake City, all the way from Virginia. It’s a long journey—across the country—but Barney needs serious work with his aggression problem. His owners have tried a lot of different things and been unsuccessful, so I’m trying to work him through this difficult issue.
When I’m thinking about how to solve dog aggression, I’m really considering two different time frames. The first is when the dog is actually displaying aggressive behavior, and the second is all of the other times. Between these two times is one hundred percent of the dog’s life. Most of the dogs with aggression that I see have a very lopsided life. Their aggression to nonaggression ratio is probably around 90/10 or 80/20, which means that most of the time the dog isn’t being aggressive at all. But of course, it’s the times when he is being aggressive that are the most troubling and the most difficult to handle. As we can see, those issues often lead to drastic measures—like sending your dog halfway across the country for training.
So we need to be concerned with both what we do when he’s being aggressive and what we do when he isn’t. Surprisingly, the latter tends to be more important than the former. Many people come to me wondering how they should handle their aggressive dog, and I always tell them that they actually need to pay a lot of attention to what they’re doing when he is not being aggressive. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.
Why is this the case? Put simply, it’s because aggressive dogs have baseline problems. Right now, Barney struggles with focus. He pulls on his leash, he goes in every direction, and he can’t decide where he wants to be. When I look at Barney, I usually don’t see a dog who’s being aggressive. Instead, I just see a dog who doesn’t know how to think calmly and pay attention to what’s around him. Solving that issue is 95% of my job. I want to give Barney a new baseline and teach him how to live a relaxed lifestyle, so that when he’s faced with another dog his calmer mind doesn’t immediately jump to aggressive behavior.
Recently, I’ve been helping a little girl named Luna through our boot camp. As I was working with Luna, I realized that 80% of the dogs we work with are medium or large dogs, and only about twenty percent would be called small dogs. People who are interested in finding a dog trainer here in Salt Lake City often ask if we even train small dogs at all!
Of course, we do work with small dogs. Unfortunately, we talk to much fewer people who are interested in training their smaller dogs. I think that there are a few reasons for that trend. For one, it’s easier to overlook misbehavior from a small dog. If a little dog jumps on you, that’s noticeably less of a problem than having a hundred-pound dog jump on you. Likewise, if a little dog poops in your house, that’s obviously not the same as an eighty-pound German Shepherd pooping in your house. That means that a lot of people overlook these problems when it comes to training their small dogs.
But I think this attitude does a huge disservice to these small dogs. If you think about it, small dogs have a more inherently difficult time in the world because everything is so much larger than them. Think of it like this: if you’re an eighty-pound dog, you’re on par with a child or a piece of furniture, you can easily reach people’s waists, and you’re generally on the same size plane as the objects surrounding you. If you’re a tiny fifteen-pound dog, however, you don’t fit as easily into a human world.
Today I want to talk about teaching your dog to fix mistakes. This idea came to me during a men’s group at church, where we were talking about the difference between acting and being acted upon. In our lives, we essentially have those two options. You probably know yourself as someone who fits one of these two groups: you’re either a person who acts, or a person who’s acted upon.
The people who are acted upon are those who are constantly complaining. They say things like: “My boss did this to me,” or “My spouse did that to me,” or “My life isn’t like it should be because this happened to me”—and so on. You probably know the type of person I’m talking about! But there are also people who act. They do what they know needs to be done. They push forward.
The same is true of dog training, because we want to train dogs who act. Here’s a principle I’ve found to be true, time and time again: the more proactive the dog is in fixing his mistake, the sooner he will stop making that mistake. This is especially relevant in puppy training and aggressive dog training.
I currently have my arm in a sling. You may not think that has anything to do with dog training, but I can usually get a training lesson out of almost every major life event!
Here’s what happened: I was at the gym the other day, trying to get in better shape. I’m not in great shape, but I’m pretty strong, and I enjoy lifting weights.
Typically, I lift by myself. When I do a bench press—which, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is when you’re lying down and pushing the weight up—I normally do it on a Smith Machine, which allows you to easily rack your weights. So if you find that you’re in over your head and suddenly have too much weight on the bar, you can flick your wrists and it will rack the weights for you. When you’re lifting by yourself and don’t have any spotters, the Smith Machine can be much safer.
The downside to the Smith Machine is that it only has one track for the weights. They move up and down in the same pattern every time. So your muscles don’t need to compensate, and as a result your body gets used to pushing in one way. If the weight weren’t on that track, you would need to have much more control over the way you’re moving your body.
A few days ago, my brother and nephew were in town, and we decided to go down to the gym and do some bench presses. Since I had a spotter I decided to do regular lifts with free weights instead of using the Smith Machine. We’d done a few sets, I felt great, and I was interested to find out how well I could do without the machine. After I’d done a few sets, I eventually got myself up to a weight that I can usually manage six to eight repetitions of. It’s not a huge amount of weight, so I wasn't being too ambitious.
Today I’d like to talk to you about a troubling sentiment that I hear quite a lot from new dog owners. It came to mind because of a conversation that I recently had with a client. This individual was explaining to me how they needed to get some training for their dog, who was aggressive toward cats, because they went to an adoption event and their daughter had to bring home a kitten. Those were their exact words: “She just had to have a kitten.” As soon as I heard that, my immediate thought was, “No, she didn’t. She didn’t need to have the kitten.”
Instead, this person had allowed their daughter to get a kitten. Furthermore, they had made a bad choice by bringing a cat into their home when they were already aware that their dog had obedience and aggression issues. This person was trying to do the right thing by finding a trainer for their dog. But this incident still shows an all-too-common problem: kids making decision about the family animals.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way. I love kids! In fact, I have four daughters myself, and my wife and I love them more than anything. We do as much as we possibly can for them. They go to dance camps and theatre camps and science and math events. That’s because we want our daughters to grow up with great experiences: we want them to meet a lot of people, see a lot of things, and come into contact with a lot of cultures. We want to raise well-rounded kids who turn into conscientious adults, so we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can give our kids more meaningful responsibilities.
In the past few posts I’ve been discussing tools, techniques, and consistency, which I believe are the only three things standing between you and the results that you want for your dog. I’ve written about having the right tools and making sure they fit properly. Then I talked about making sure we have the right techniques, and that we’re doing them correctly. These are both very important concepts.
But the last thing that stands in the way of most dog owners is consistency, which is dependent to some extent on having the right tools and techniques. I commonly hear owners say things like: “I don't know what to do, I’m being so consistent with my dog and yet he’s still aggressive.” If I look at the techniques that they’re using, however, they’re usually wrong.
I recently took my daughter to equestrian speech therapy. Now, I was initially skeptical about how a horse could help her speak better. But here’s how the half-hour session works: they had her brush the horse, grab the saddle, and walk around the farm. Then they asked her things like, “Look at that horse, he has a stripe—can you say ‘stripe’?” or “That horse is wearing a saddle—can you try to say ‘saddle’?” Essentially, they addressed all of her problem areas in regular, conversational terms.
Today, I want to tell you about the three things that are standing in between you and the results you want from your training efforts. There are a million mistakes we can make, but there are only three categories of mistakes: tool problems, technique problems, and consistency problems.
One of the biggest reasons that people don’t get the results they want is that they don’t have the right tools, or aren't using those tools properly. Training is tool-heavy in the beginning, whether that beginning period lasts for a couple days or a few months. This principle applies to any style of training. Regardless of the style or method that you’ve chosen, it’s always going to be tool-heavy.
In this post, I’d like to talk about the power of duration work, by which I simply mean doing something for an extended period of time. It’s highly uncommon for a dog not to know how to sit. Many also know how to lie down. A few more know how to come when called or heel. Regardless, every dog that I meet has some level of obedience training. It’s very rare for a dog to not know any commands.
Today I want to give you some more information about tools, technique, and consistency, which I’ve said before are the only things standing between you and the results you want to have with your dog. Those are the three categories of mistakes that you’re making right now, and they’re leading to you not getting the results that you need.
We’ve already discussed tools, so today I want to talk more about techniques. When it comes to techniques, we need to look at two main aspects: do we have the correct technique, and are we performing the technique correctly?
Since I was about fourteen, I’ve been constantly working. I started working for a dog trainer when I was fourteen. Later, I had plenty of other jobs until I was able to make training my full-time profession, but I was always working a lot.
Dog owners commonly come to me saying things like, “I got this Labrador”—or Pyrenees, or any other breed—“and the breed book tells me it’s going to be exactly like this.” Or, “After I got my German Shepherd, I started reading up on them, so I know exactly what they’re like.”
Here’s the thing: there are differences between breeds, but most breeds have been drastically altered from the original breed standard. Your dog’s temperament, appearance, and behavior probably don’t match up with what’s in the breed book, at least not in every way.
Through the years, I’ve found that dog owners and trainers alike frequently misunderstand the concept of exercise. Quite often owners come to me for the first time and say things like; “We don’t understand out dog. He’s really aggressive. We exercise the heck out of him, but he’s still aggressive on walks.” Or: “I don’t get it! My dog chewed the couch and dug up the back yard even though I exercise him all the time.”
A while ago I made a post about dog breeds, and today I’d like to come at this subject from a different angle. Another thing that’s important to understand about breeding is that, even though many breeds have changed over time, there are certain characteristics that are common to certain breeds. That’s not always the case, but it can be.
When I talk to an owner about their dog’s behavior problems, the conversation often sounds like we’re discussing icebergs. See, when you first glimpse an iceberg, it’s 90% under the surface. What you're actually seeing is the tip of it.
Often, people tell me about the tip of their dog’s iceberg. This isn’t to say that there are a billion hidden problems lurking under the surface, just that people fail to comprehend that they have a different problem than they actually think they have.
The other day while I was hanging out with my dogs in the living room, I noticed an important difference between my house and many of the other dog-owning houses I go into. As far as toys for the dogs, all I have is a small chewing bone, a tennis ball, and a deer antler. That’s it.
For the past decade, there has been a non-adversive movement in dog training that rejects correction in favor of positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, this trend is sponsored more by public relations and feel-good sentiments than by actual science about the way that dogs learn. According to this philosophy, undesirable behaviors should be ignored or avoided by desensitizing dogs to their triggers.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about a trend that I see among many puppy owners. I frequently talk to puppy owners who want to make sure that their dogs never bite anyone or misbehave in any way. In other words, they want to hedge their bets.These people come in with the right mindset: they’re ready to put in the work early on so that they don’t have more serious problems later on.
Believe it or not, your dog understands equations. Not on a human level, of course, but there is still an element of comprehension in their minds.
Let me illustrate this using an example. If I have a tasty piece of meat sitting on the kitchen counter and I’m standing beside it, my dog will leave it alone because I’m right there beside her. To her, the equation looks something like this:
Today I’d like to talk a little bit about adrenaline. I’m not going to give an explanation of what adrenaline is on a chemical level—this isn’t a science talk! Instead, I’d like to share a bit about how adrenaline affects your dog and his behavior.
If I take my dog out for a walk, wandering around and having some fun, is there adrenaline in her system? To a degree. But if some birds were to fly up out of the grass, her adrenaline would spike very quickly, and she might take off and chase them.
I've talked about the relationship between focus and adrenaline in the past. Today I want to talk a little bit more specifically about focus, and explain how to help your dog overcome a lack of it.
Recently, I took my dog for a walk. As we approached a fork in the road, she got distracted by a man on a bicycle, and I lost a bit of her focus. A few minutes later, her ears perked up and she started to get distracted again by what was happening further down the road.
In this post, I'd like to tackle a different sort of topic: the difference between the way I raise my kids and the way I train my dogs.
A while ago, I was speaking to a trainer who opposes the use of any kind of correction in dog training. "You wouldn't use an electric collar on your kids, would you?" he asked, thinking he'd caught me out. I told him that I wouldn't. "Well, why not, if you use them on dogs?" For the same reason that I don't take my daughters out into the back yard to use the bathroom, or put them on a leash to take them for a walk, of course!
One idea that I often come back to is the “collateral effect.” This concept doesn’t just apply to your dog—it also applies to you. Imagine that you begin every day by drinking a smoothie and meditating, or a long jog and some time with your children, or maybe eating a healthy breakfast and reading a great book. Now imagine that instead of starting your day off like that, you woke up, hopped onto Facebook right away, and got into an argument with someone about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Maybe you’re late to get to work and are scrambling around, trying to get ready on time.
Spending more time outside in the beautiful Utah spring has reminded me that many owners envision their backyard as their dog’s domain. Over the years I’ve noticed that, of the hundreds of clients I speak with every year, only one or two have full-time backyard dogs. Very few good dog owners keep their dogs outdoors all the time.
Today I’d like to talk about two concepts that I call “structured motion” and “structured stillness.” Although this concept is one that I frequently utilize in training of anxious dogs, it’s one that not every owner thoroughly understands. When I work with other professional trainers, I have found that this concept frequently goes unexplained. But it is still an integral part of helping dogs that struggle with anxiety and insecurity.