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}
