18/06/2026
The expanded 2nd Edition, and finally the much requested E-Book version, of Real World Dog (and Human!) Training, is now available on Amazon!
Get your copy on the link below.
Also, I recently received the following message from a reader, and think that it is worth including in full, with permission.
It is very gratifying to see that the book is having the kind of impact that is needed, and which is the reason I wrote the book.
Hopefully there are many more like Marcin willing to have their beliefs challenged and not just remain ideologically driven:
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Dear Tully,
I wanted to send you a brief note to thank you for your book.
I come from the positive-only training community, and after several years I have finally come to realize that it is, in many ways, an ideology rather than an evidence-based approach. Looking back, I can also see that some of its assumptions can be genuinely harmful, and in some cases do not lead to good outcomes.
I was initially motivated to read your book after seeing John Staddon's review of it. I also happened to have your previous book sitting on my shelf, which I bought quite a while ago but never fully appreciated at the time.
Most of all, I wanted to express my gratitude for the enormous amount of work that must have gone into writing this book. The depth of research, the careful argumentation, and the sheer effort involved are obvious on every page. It is a valuable contribution to the field, and I am very grateful that you took the time to write it.
Thank you again for your work.
Best regards,
Marcin Koniarski
And…
Hi Tully,
Thank you for your reply.
To answer your question, no, I am not actively training dogs at the moment. I feel that I need some time to rethink and reorganize many of my assumptions about dog training.
What makes this experience particularly strange for me is that I come from a behavior analysis background. Over the years I have read hundreds of JEAB papers and have a strong interest in conceptual and theoretical issues within behavior analysis. In fact, one of the reasons I paid attention to John Staddon's review was that I already knew his experimental work and had previously read Science in an Age of Unreason.
Looking back, I am not surprised that I remained committed to the positive-only philosophy for so long despite encountering many signs that some of its claims were overgeneralizations. Most of us genuinely care about animal welfare, and that concern makes certain narratives very compelling.
Yesterday I went back and reread parts of Karen Pryor's work and was surprised by how many contradictions I now see, sometimes within only a few paragraphs, just like you mentioned in your book. An even bigger shock has been re-examining Sidman's Coercion and Its Fallout. For many years that book was almost a bible to me, so revisiting it with a more critical eye has been a genuinely unsettling experience.
I have also purchased several of your videos and experimented with my own dog, a pet Border Collie. One thing that really surprised me was how quickly I was able to teach a "follow behind" behavior. This is a dog who would previously become "frustrated" (typically barking) whenever my training was not carried out almost perfectly. Following your approach, however, the behavior emerged quickly and smoothly, with none of that usual "frustration," and the dog seemed genuinely happy and relaxed throughout and afterwards.
Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, has been the gap between what I imagined when reading descriptions of your methods and what I actually saw when watching your videos. For years, terms such as "correction" or "punishment" in dog training automatically brought images of harsh treatment to mind. Then I watched your training and saw a calm, thoughtful trainer working dogs without any of the things I had imagined.
It has left me feeling as though I am reassessing a great deal of what I thought I knew.
And yes, you are absolutely welcome to use my message, or any part of it. I would also be happy to write an Amazon review once I have finished the book.
Regards,
Marcin
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Get your copy today!
Real World Dog (and Human!) Training: Why Correction Succeeds and "Positive" Training Fails
