Among my favorite types of clients to work with is one who has a dog who’s reactive to other dogs on leash. The kind of dog that makes a person want to crawl into a hole in the ground the minute the dog starts throwing his barky, growly display at the dog coming down the street or around the corner or out the door of a house he’s passing by. I know the embarrassing feeling. I’ve had a couple of {Read More}
Respect Boundaries and Advocate For Your Dogs
November 4, 2013 by
I was walking along an avenue during a busy jazz festival yesterday. The event was loud, lots of people had dogs of all sizes with them, and on the sidewalk ahead of me were two women engaged in conversation. One woman held a black Pomeranian puppy in her hands. As I approached, ahead of me, a man walked right up to the woman and stuck both of his hands on the puppy and ruffled her up. I was astonished from {Read More}
Motivational Dog Training – Criteria
November 3, 2013 by
My mentor, Jean Donaldson, taught me there are two parts to review when a dog is disinterested in training. If it’s not motivation, then it’s criteria. What is criteria in dog training? Criteria is the contract we have with the dog about the behavior he needs to perform to get the reinforcement. The level of difficulty of criteria increases as the dog matches his behavior to the current criteria we are looking for. For example, when teaching a down stay, {Read More}
Motivational Dog Training – Toys
November 2, 2013 by
Some dogs are highly motivated by toys. They’re born to play, and when you are blessed with a dog like this, you’ll have plenty of dog training time because the reward of play is always available. The flip side, however, is you have to give these dogs a lot to do, and do a lot with them, or they’ll be called destructive and uncontrollable when they use their energy for whatever makes them happy. Case in point why I offer {Read More}
Motivating Dogs
November 1, 2013 by
I have an avocado tree that has started producing fruit. For the last three years, in progression, two avocados in year one, several more in year two, and this year, a few more. I had plans for sharing these fruit, until recently, a varmint stopped my plans in its tracks. The thing got not one, but two, of my precious reserve. And they were not nearly ripe enough to get tasty after being in a paper bag for several days. {Read More}
Halloween Dogs
October 31, 2013 by
Happy Halloween from Love Wags A Tail, dog training and behavior modification in Broward county and Fort Lauderdale! I ran across this video yesterday, a superbly put together arrangement of trick dog training. This is the sort of fun you can have training dogs to do tricks. Training dogs is a process, remember, so it doesn’t happen over night, but also, so is life, so let’s not rush it. That stays true to training dogs, too, in Florida or any {Read More}
Fear of the Camera
October 30, 2013 by
It’s Halloween eve, time of zombies, gremlins, and other scary stuff. So I thought I’d expand a little more on yesterday’s post, Clicking, and the fear of cameras that some dogs develop. As I mentioned, the best way to dodge installing the fear of a camera into a dog is to avoid using the flash in his direction or pointing a camera too close to him before training him to accept it. If the camera’s aversive to him, then he’s {Read More}
Clicking
October 29, 2013 by
One of the lovely things about shaping a dog through clicker training is how, once they learn the game, they offer behaviors of all sorts. This can be fun, especially when taking photographs. I use lots of treats when I’m taking photos, and I take a lot of photos. Years ago, this was prohibited because every snap of the camera meant a fee for developing film. Digital cameras, however, changed all that, so we can click away as long as {Read More}
No-Sew Halloween Bandana For Dogs
October 28, 2013 by
Halloween is just a few days away! If you want to gussy up your dog with a little bit of Halloween, then the video below is the one to watch. Especially if you’re not into sewing, but into fast, festive, and easy dog fashions. All you’ll need are a pair of pinking shears, a ruler, and the fabric! I made this video a few years ago on how to make an inexpensive, no-sew bandana or scarf for your dog. And {Read More}
Trickle Down Volunteerism
October 27, 2013 by
I worked at a corporation for a little over 10 years downtown. From almost the start of my employment, I rallied department admins to save their newspapers for me, so I could put them to good use in dog rescue, animal shelters, and at the wildlife center. There wasn’t even a recycling program going on there at the time, so the papers usually ended up in the trash. Every Friday, for 10 years, I wheeled a cart from floor to {Read More}
Inaugural Kong Cleansing
October 23, 2013 by
I stuff Kongs with food to encourage my dogs to work for meals when I don’t use their daily rations for dog training. I also encourage my dog training clients to use food toys for their dogs. Kongs serve to use some of the mental energy dogs have. My personal bias is that Kong Dog Toys, and other food-destuffing toys, are doggy meditative toys. Have you ever watched a dog with a Kong between his paws licking out the {Read More}
Food Toys
October 20, 2013 by
I usually use Kongs as food toys for my dogs. Food toys/puzzles are a magnificent way to stretch your dog’s mind muscles. When you can’t train with your dog’s meal, then use food puzzles. This way the dog still has to work for his meal, and that means expending that mental energy that you and I know is *work* to put out! Oh, and you don’t have to use just one type of food toy, or one food toy of {Read More}
Why Use Food For Dog Training?
October 19, 2013 by
Food is a motivator to every living being on the planet. Without food, we would perish. When the feeling of hunger strikes, it’s pretty hard to think of anything else but eating, especially as your stomach starts to growl. Having such a powerful motivator is almost like having a magic wand. Food gets a dog’s attention. Dogs focus when food is in the training game. Food motivates. Period. This is cause to celebrate not complain! Reinforcing behaviors with food makes {Read More}
Fort Lauderdale Cookie Trainer
October 18, 2013 by
Cookie training is a euphemism for dog training using food as motivation. That euphemism is most often used by force trainers, those using pain to train. Dog trainers who were running classes when I first started learning to train were unimpressed, and maybe even uneducated, about the power behind training with treats. Force was the dominant method of dog training then, literally and figuratively. But now there is a much better way to train dogs using two of the four {Read More}
Cookie Training
October 17, 2013 by
When I was first learning how to train dogs, it was back in the 80’s. My first classes were with Dick Koehler. Through his tutelage, I learned how to train dogs using a method of force. If we are looking at quadrants, that would be positive punishment (which really isn’t positive at all) and negative reinforcement. Positive punishment was what we did to dogs when we yanked up on the choke chain when a dog didn’t obey the command, sit, {Read More}
