Smokey. Smokey is a 17-week-old mini Aussie who’s board-and-training with us. Her daring enthusiasm is matched by her persistence to get what she wants. This is the kind of pup we love at Outsmarting Dogs. (OK, we love all pups.) With our delicious and motivating training food and solid training plans, she is fast on her way to being a bright star. Smokey’s favorite non-food reinforcement is our recent staff-and-family addition, beautiful Emilie the Dobermann. Smokey loves to play chase {Read More}
Dogs Who Say Please
June 4, 2017 By
Dogs who learn behaviors via humane, reward-based training will communicate by offering behaviors for attention or a cookie. What a brilliant mind of a dog to use what she’s learned to ask for something. Dogs who offer behaviors, in essence are saying, “Please.” “I just saw you give that puppy a cookie for pooping in the yard. I can do all this. Please may I have a cookie, too?” That was my 9-year-old Australian Shepherd, Bunny, saying please. For a {Read More}
Training A Dog To Think
May 31, 2017 By
Training dogs with food results in a well behaved, fun dog, who uses her smarts to think herself through a lifetime of possibilities. Reward-based trained dogs offer behaviors for the possibility of a reward while dogs trained with pain-based methods, respond to commands out of fear of a painful reprimand. Dogs trained with pain do not offer behaviors. But a dog trained with food results in a dog who thinks and who then uses her skill of learning to fearlessly {Read More}
Dog Training Food: Why Have Variety?
May 24, 2017 By
Having various flavors and desirability of dog training food at-the-ready is imperative when training a dog. Because, when working on a behavior that’s difficult for a dog to learn, getting and keeping a dog’s complete attention and willingness to move forward will be more challenging. That’s when the steak-level training food is brought out with the well-vetted training plan. For example, when working with a dog to step onto a skateboard as he advances on the training plan will require {Read More}
A Big Step
May 22, 2017 By
I grew up with a parent who believed a pet dog should not be stepped over, but rather should move out of a person’s way, even if the dog were enjoying a peaceful snooze. He should wake and move out of the way fast. So the family dogs were never comfortable lying in the pathway of foot traffic. And most places in our house were foot-traffic worthy. Because the dogs had been conditioned to jump up and move out of {Read More}
Adopt Me: Senior Mini Poodle
May 21, 2017 By
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}
