Dogspeak

08/10/2023

Love this!❤️

03/25/2023

03/20/2023

Meera passed her AKC Canine Good Citizen test this morning! 💪🤩🤎 What a good girl!!! 🥰

03/09/2023

Thirty six years ago, the cities surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant were forced to abandon their pets during the world’s worst nuclear disaster. T...

03/07/2023

The trainer supplies the reward, but the dog chooses the value of that reward! Choose higher value rewards if necessary to get better engagement or to fine-tune behavior.

03/01/2023

This sweet girl was wandering on a dangerous road so she got a ride home! Thanks to the kind hearted person who stopped and helped find Luna’s people.

02/24/2023

A good example of how NOT to train a dog.

Here’s why:

It’s important to remember that the trainer just had the dog brought to him the day before.

First, he tolerates unwanted behavior from the dog. Always give your dog clear picture of what is wanted behavior.

At the 3:16 mark, he gives a command that the dog doesn’t know, so when the dog naturally releases itself, for some reason, the man THEN uses a release word (also something the dog likely doesn’t know) and then corrects the dog! The dog is immediately like “wtf?” From this point forward he is acting out of fear, which his body language certainly shows.

The handler then displays the worst “sit” sequence attempt I’ve seen on video and they haven’t even made it outside yet.

While walking, random stops with direct and poorly timed punishment. He allows the dog to be at the end of leash sometimes but then randomly stops and yanks on a loose leash. He actually rewarded a tense leash at one point! And there’s lots of inconsistencies in how he holds and uses the leash that aren’t helping.

There are multiple ways to get someone to pay attention to you. Fear of pain/punishment is definitely not the best. Even if something seems to work for the moment, doesn’t mean it’s without cost, usually to the dog’s psyche.

I like that he’s not using a choke, prong or shock collar. In fact, I prefer as little equipment as possible. However, the inconsistent and harsh leash corrections, failure to mark (audibly pinpointing a specific action at a specific moment in time) either good or bad behavior and poor attitude are unfortunate and detrimental to your dog’s relationship with you. A big, fun-loving lab might be resilient enough to make it through one of these videos but many dogs would completely shut down, be highly stressed, and associate fear with the trainer. It’s also completely irresponsible to encourage millions of unskilled home trainers to start randomly leash popping their dogs.

Learn my one of a king method to fix leash pulling and loose leash walking