Concern about the use of drugs is not new In the 80's there was a campaign to keep kids off of drugs and the mantra was "just say no to drugs."  I thought the better advice to give kids about what they should or shouldn't do when it came to their physical and mental health was "just say I'll think about it." I would ...
At some point early in the life of a human we develop intellectually and emotionally enough to realize that it's not always just about us. Hopefully when this happens we've had plenty of time to learn to feel safe and loved. It's not an easy step to take, but a step that most of us not only take, but run with. We go on to become teachers, ...
In my world the reality is that those of us living with a dog with fear-based behavior challenges must be better than average pet owners. I say this meaning no offense to average pet owners. Anyone who chooses to live with an animal is ahead of the curve in my book. Most however do not add a dog to their lives in order to have ...
I suspect that those of us who work with dogs in any capacity, love them, respect them and want them to have the best lives possible. Yet I can't help but be surprised and disappointed when I hear and read information about dogs being shared that does more harm than good, or opportunities to educate the pet owning population are missed. Research on the social ...
In May I'll be traveling to the islands of Puerto Rico, Culebra and Vieques with a group to contribute our energy to the cause of changing how people handle and train their dogs. No doubt there will be people who will embrace the information we'll be sharing about force-free and coercion-free training with the enthusiasm of someone who has been adrift at sea waiting for the ...
Go on Sunny, there's fun ahead. When a dog performs a fearful or aggressive behavior it's as though they are saying, "I don't have the skills to behave in any other way in this situation." Why would you want to make them repeat themselves? If you were to drop a kid into a pool that was just deep enough they didn't feel completely safe ...
One of my goals for this blog, my Facebook pages, group, and tweets, is to try to stave off the inclination pet owners and many dog trainers have to jump on any bandwagon that comes along in regard to training dogs, or to keep throwing different sh*t against the wall and hoping something sticks. There is no shortage of advice, methods, equipment and supplements out ...
There are few fields in which having grown up either performing a task or with the student, is enough to qualify one as a professional and justifies charging for one's services. Unless of course we are talking about dog trainers. I grew up reading and might be able to teach plenty of kids to read but if your kid has dyslexia it would be wiser ...
Nothing to worry about here! When we are training our fearful dogs we are facilitating a change in how they respond to events or objects (including us and other animals) they are exposed to. There is likely an endless array of ways we can come up with to do this, but ultimately what we are doing is making the scary stuff either neutral ...
There is a science to behavior change in animals. That most pet owners are unaware of that is not surprising. That there are dog trainers out there who are unaware of it is disastrous. I know just enough about my car and computer to turn them on and use them, when all is going according to plan. When problems arise, even if my cursing and ...
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