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Last month I wrote about ‘Dogs Don’t Understand Don’t’. This month is about changing your mindset about Science Based, Reward/Choice training for your dog.
Is there a dog training frustration you would love to change? Something that you think your dog will never “get”? Please consider what it would look like if you could change your mindset and turn any annoyance or frustration for you and your dog around. I’ve been training dogs for many, many years now. Not just my own but others too, as well as their humans…

Dogs don’t understand “Don’t” because don’t is a human concept. A more successful approach, one that is not conceptual but absolute, would be from a place of “DO”! DO, is teaching our dogs what it is that we want them to DO, instead of focusing on what we “don’t”. Rather than putting energy into coming up with strategies to stop our dogs from doing an undesired behavior, let’s teach our dogs in layers of learning to build a solid foundation of reinforcement for behaviors that we DO want to see. In doing so, we help our dogs to find joy in the things that we want them to do and we create a dog that on their own, will CHOOSE to do what we desire. There’s no force, blame, correction or punishment. There’s just joy…

Throughout my years with dogs and dog training, I see so many people with new puppies that just don’t know what’s okay and what’s not okay to do for their puppies’ exercise. Many think it’s cute to see a puppy get the “zoomies” and run around jumping from thing to thing. It may be cute but it’s not at all good for their bone and joint growth. I want to share some knowledge with all of you that have new puppies or those that are planning to get a pup in the future. As Bob Baily, a top National and International animal trainer says, “When you know better, you do better…

I get asked a lot about dog training and I usually explain the ABC’s of dog behavior. I thought I’d share this with all of you. We, as humans, often don’t consider how the dog’s brain works in simple terms. My hope is that this will help clarify how your dog thinks in terms of getting reinforced. Good or bad. I’m going to “geek out” a bit here, but stick with me…