Sammie’s an energetic, 10-year-old dynamo. He has a big prey drive, so can’t be placed in a home with other pets besides a friendly smaller dog his size. Sammie hunts cats, lizards, birds, snakes, squirrels, hamsters, any varmint that moves and chases bikes, cars, skateboarders that go by the front fence. He will even chase and bark at a low flying plane. He’s had a lot of training. His graduation video from the summer of 2016. His owner was no {Read More}
Behavior Markers in Dog Training
May 21, 2017 By
When training with a clicker, the sound of the “click” marks the moment the dog executes a behavior the trainer is seeking. That sound communicates to the dog he succeeded and will be rewarded. Every time a trainer clicks, she must give the dog reinforcement, generally, training food. The click is the secondary reinforcer, which announces the food, which is the primary reinforcer, is to come. If a trainer accidentally clicks at the wrong time, it’s important she still give {Read More}
Chomping The Hand That Feeds Her
May 12, 2017 By
THIS HURTS! Giving a chomper food is painful. My dog Raven needed to take a step back in training for me to re-teach her how to take training food with ease. So I stopped training the behavior we were working on, and for a couple of sessions, we worked on taking the dog training food nicely and in a polite manner minus any pain to my palm. I wiped some chicken fat on my palm, and offered her my palm. {Read More}
Our Motivating Dog Training Food
May 9, 2017 By
When training dogs, I always use a motivating, nutritional food and most of the time, this is food that I bake. I bake trays of dog training food at a time, wrap what I’ll not be using immediately in waxed paper, and store them in the freezer in sturdy freezer bags. Later, I take out and defrost as needed. The waxed paper helps keep freezer crystals from forming and the plastic freezer bags insulate the food. They defrost nicely. Take {Read More}
Hiring a Professional Dog Trainer
May 8, 2017 By
If you are a service professional, have you found that people come up to you to ask for free advice just because you are present? I would bet more service professionals than not would answer the question with a resounding yes! It eventually happens. As for me, a couple weeks ago, someone who I’ve had scant conversations with asked me a how-to dog-training question on the fly. The question she asked me needed more than a 60-second sound byte, especially {Read More}
