Lionheart K9, Dog Training in Maryland

09/05/2025

It is not very bright to walk 2 ginormous dogs without decent training. I didn't screenshot of the handler, but suffice it to say they were probably about 1/3 the entire mass of these behemoths.

The imbicile in the car *could* have simplified matters by rolling up their window before the dog stuck its head out, but no, why do that? It's better to show the world your ignorance by exacerbating the problem and not controlling your own dog more efficiently.

And this is why we can't have anything nice.

This is why dogs are being shut out of public spaces.

People have absolutely no idea of how their behavior impacts others.

Now, if this had gotten out of hand, there would have been a lot more bloodshed than just the dog.

These bungholes thought they had control of their animals. What would the likelihood have been for calling them off each other if those two mastiffs had made it to the dog hanging out of the car?

Do better.

Or just stop making yourself look like an idiot in public.

09/02/2025

Wow this hits so close to home. This is the primary driver to my current state of unrest over my career, this trade, and the last 50 plus years of my life.

Sometimes one of the hardest lessons to learn and to accept is that nobody can make some other person want something.

Through reward and punishment, the saying goes, you can often make someone DO something, but the wanting comes from within, and it is either there or it isn’t there.

Riding teachers, among others, have struggled with this, often when real talent is shining through, but the possessor of that talent is indifferent.

At some point, for everyone’s sake, probably best to quietly walk away.

09/02/2025

I get a lot of folks who "mail it in" when it comes to actually doing the work, getting in the reps, and practicing for improvement.

There are legitimate reasons. Life happens. Everybody has their share of pitfalls that derail their plans, but that doesn't mean you can't do the work. It just means that you have to roll the work into the time you have, which is something you should be doing anyway.

Practice heeling in the house, around the kids, the cat, food or toys. Practice stays the same way.

You don't have to go into the wilderness to teach your dog to ignore temptations, you just have to learn how to use what you have available.

"Perfect" isn't what we're after.

"Improvement" is.

It's also much more achievable.

09/01/2025

Sometimes, it is that simple. Training never ends. Reinforcement never ends. Consistency never ends.

If you marginalize any one of these three things, your work suffers, your progress suffers, and your goals are harder to obtain.

Introducing a behavior is the part of the pyramid that affords the most help and the least consequences for failure of refusal.

In the teaching phase, we offer equal shares of help, but we introduce a consequence for failure or refusal. Remember, each command we teach is on its own separate 'timeline'.

In the final 'proofing' phase, we offer very little help, and the dog is held responsible for the knowledge. Now, that doesn't mean we tar him for his failure, but if he has successfully navigated the first two tiers, we have a valid reason to add a punishment for that refusal or failure.

Punishment doesn't mean lighting him up like a Christmas tree, or banging on the leash, it's just adding something the dog dislikes to discourage a behavior, or removing something the dog likes to encourage a behavior.

And then spend more time back at previous levels of instruction to ensure it's not a failure of teaching.

For the folks that think *training* is measured in weeks as opposed to reflecting on their own experience of years, you have a lot to learn about patience.

You understand human learning is ongoing, but expect dogs to learn something in a hot minute.

It's neither realistic nor fair.

Carry on.

08/31/2025

It's not rocket surgery.

If you are inconsistent, don't blame your dog for the mistakes you made.

The visual cues you use during the teaching phase of any behavior is *as important* as the audible cue.

Be sloppy in your delivery, be inconsistent in your delivery, and create a dog who performs the same way.

08/30/2025

It's gonna be a good time!

08/29/2025

Provide options.

Guide choices.

Control outcomes.

Help the dog be right by limiting any other option.

08/28/2025

You can't trust your dog to make good decisions. Your dog pulls on the leash, lunges at strangers, growls at your guests.

Your response to this behavior has never yielded any permanent result. It may abbreviate the behavior *in that moment*, but it always resurfaces.

Did it occur to you that your dog cannot rely on the mixed signals he has gotten from you, his owner?

Trust has a living current that runs in both directions. Dogs are literal creatures and thrive on consistency and clear direction.

Your lack of consistency in communication is interfering in developing that relationship of mutual trust and respect.

Your dog is not a *bad* dog, he has just never learned how to cope with all the conflicts in communication. Dogs don't understand nuance.

They are taught to respond to our cues, and when those cues are inconsistent or perceived as threatening, our dogs are simply answering that communication question the best that they know how.

There's no trick to it. Be fair, be clear, and keep your emotions out of it.

When you are ready, we are here.

08/27/2025

Ya know, it's only Wednesday and already it's been a week.

In the middle of editing videos from this past weekend and the power goes off. I heard the transformer blow. Now we're in the dark.

What we have going for us- it's daylight, at least, and it's COOL.

JUST got this one edited for time, but it's a cute little pup that is undergoing some resistance to being restrained and physically handled.

This is the cornerstone of our young dog program. *I* perfected it, based on decades of handling puppies and preparing dogs for the show ring, and working in vet med with animals that were either frightened or pi**ed off. *I* codified it, and I have been teaching it to students and serious trainers for decades.

It pleases me to see it more broadly applied by people I have coached, and even by people who have plaigerized things I have shared publicly, but there's nothing like the original. There's more information in the subtext that almost all others either dismiss or overlook, some of which are linchpins to my method.

Yes, that's right. I said *my* method.

Accept no substitutes.

This clip is fast and simple. I will be reviewing the young dog handling and interspersing how we manage adult dogs with little or no training in the coming weeks.

You can get access to the downloadable written material and the video tutorials by clicking on the link in the comments.

08/18/2025

On my trek to annoy people and plant the seeds of discontent- early morning ramblings brought to you by pre-coffee. A long dissertation on the state of the dog trainer's trade.

Every day I receive inquiries from potential clients for dog training. The conversations are relatively simple; inquirer points out issues, I suggest potential solutions.

Over the course of an epoch, I have developed a mental shorthand for the unspoken words "between the lines", whether I am speaking to them or responding to an electronic inquiry.

Our whole industry is underwritten with the expressed understanding that we supply a service, and that this service has a deliverable, quantifiable 'product'. We, as providers, have created a system that at least tries to address client needs and balance that against what *we* as professionals, know about dog behavior.

Pair that with ego, pride, basic human nature, and you start to see where our lives can quickly spiral into a maze of reflective soul searching through a minefield of traps that we must navigate carefully in order to meet our obligations, and still survive without killing ourselves or inflicting bodily harm on others.

I honestly don't believe there is a trade as divisive or contentious as the dog trainer's trade.

Compound that with basic human greed, ignorance and the willful manipulation of facts to drive agendas, and you are burdened with an industry that eats its own young at a rate that has us on the path of extinction before I take my last breath, and I'm well into my 60’s.

At the root of it all?

Media.

Media fuels the dog trainer's trade, although owners are the ones that need us.

Read the rest at the link in the comments...

08/17/2025

Finding a capable trainer is the same as finding an honest mechanic or a doctor that respects your observations. I mean, it's your auto, body, or dog. Nobody is more familiar with these things than you.

I counsel laypeople to not only research, but interview prospective service providers. If you're not going to like them, if they don't resonate with you on some level, you're not likely to take their advice.

Even then, things can go wrong, but at least you put in the effort to start out on the right foot, anyway.

Service providers are dime a dozen, but good ones require effort to locate. I offer consultations for folks to get a sense of me, and me of them. It's a two way process, because I want people to be confident in their choice. My biggest issue is time wasters- every profession has them; they expect easy solutions to complex problems and are constantly poking for information that when taken out of context can be harmful.

I charge for that service. That is one of several barriers that determine commitment. If they don't perceive the value, they will move on to the cheaper alternative.

The internet is a scary place. If one has no knowledge of a subject and they seek information on the internet, it quickly becomes Alice through the looking glass. The proliferation of bu****it on Google is in direct correlation to the commonality of the subject.

Little known fact- some of the first internet content was dog training specific. Back in the annals of time, in order to test markets, dog training and diets were the first two marketing paradigms offered on the world wide web. No s**t.

Historically, finding a decent trainer meant going to your local kennel club. Now, with the exponential growth of the all positive movement, finding timely, salient solutions to serious problems is difficult. It has become an either/or scenario and that's not safe nor healthy.

As in this post and in previous posts, there is more than one influence on the success or failure of any venture.

Can the trainer convey the information sufficiently to achieve a result? Is the owner capable of understanding and following that advice? Are they willing? The dog itself poses a question; age plays an influence, as does experiential influences. Breed proclivities, nature/nurture, purpose-bred working dog in the wrong environment? Street dog wrangled off the hellscape of some inner city and dumped into suburbia with 3 kids and a picket fence?

These are just a part.

Social media is great for a lot of things. It enables you to watch the trainer. Watch their hands. How do they handle the leash. Are they inclined to sn**ch at the leash and jerk the dog? Are they quiet handlers or are they miming the Celebutant trainer as seen on TeeVee. How long have they been around? Less than 10 years? More than 10?

Longevity matters. If the trainer has a long history, it's more likely they have survived the true test of professional success- the ability to make a sustainable income as a trainer. That is telling, in a trade where folks bob in an out like dunking for apples. I think the average small business failure within the first 5 years is pretty high. Trainers stepping outside their scope and getting injured is much sooner. Getting bit is a big deterrent.

If we start making access to services contingent on both the behavior of the client and their dog, you'd be surprised how many would opt out entirely.

Is that a bad thing? I don't believe so. It helps as a bellwether to determine relative success, usually, but even then, mistakes happen.

Most people don't really want a dog. They want the idea of a dog.
As a collective, we need to set aside this notion that owner surveys are science and that collars are inherently bad.

I am probably one of the only trainers on this side of the ocean that believes if we don't start policing our own, we won't like who polices us and what policies are created to govern us.

But first we have to decide what actually constitutes a trained dog, and heaven forbid, nobody wants to qualify THAT.

This originally appeared in September 2023. I reposted it because it is still relevant and people have short memories.