The most important part of dog training is the stuff that's easy to miss. Pulling on the leash, barking at the door, lunging at a passing dog, melting down over a kid on a skateboard: dogs can do the exact same thing for completely different reasons. One dog is overexcited. One is unsure. One dog has low frustration tolerance. One is terrified. One dog needs instruction about what to do. One dog needs to learn how to ask for help. Another dog needs to learn to walk away. If we treat all dogs...

I'm very often asked if we are reinforcing a dog for being afraid, for barking, for being aggressive. And yes, it is absolutely possible to make all of those things worse if we use food or toys or praise incorrectly. Cue/mark/reinforce right? Ask our dog to do something, say 'yes' and feed a treat. That is how we build behaviours. Training emotions is different. We use food or toys or praise to CREATE a better emotional state, THEN we think about behaviours. It gets complicated though as the...

Can you even see the puppy way back there??? Did you know that at first I wondered if Runa was a bit ...ummm... slow? Or maybe I really wasn't as good of a trainer as I thought I was. I wasn't having any success teaching her regular puppy things: down, stay, hand touch. In a session, we wouldn't progress at all. Maybe I was used to border collie puppies and they really are just that much smarter than other dogs? I was confused. Let it all go for a bit - just play with the puppy. Enjoy her....