Blog

AKC Novice rally has 40 different signs. That number tends to overwhelm new competitors, and honestly, I understand why. Forty signs feels like forty things to memorize, forty different pictures to learn, forty separate puzzles to solve before you ever step into the ring.

Here's the thing though. Every single one of those 40 signs comes down to the same six skills: heeling, sits, downs, fronts, finishes, and stays. That's it. Once you understand that, the entire level starts to look a lot less intimidating. 

Ever wondered how leading competitors build the incredible engagement we see in the ring, where the dog stares up at their handler and the team looks totally in sync and in step? Petra Ford joins me to talk about how she builds engagement strong enough to win Obedience Nationals with mulitple dogs.

 Teaching our dogs the concept of "stillness" is more complex than we sometimes realize — after all, how do you teach a dog that what we want is the absence of a behavior? In this episode, Nicole and I talk about how she teaches the concept, and then how it serves as a foundation behavior for teaching rock solid stays to her competition dogs.

In this episode I interview clinical psychologist Dr. Jennifer Kunst about the intersection of dog training and psychology. We look at how her three-strand approach to living a good life—embracing reality, choosing change, and surrendering control—applies to dogs and dog training.

Four of the presenters from the upcoming one day conference, Arousal Modulation: Building a Clear-Headed Dog!, join me for a conversation about how arousal works, why it's not all good or all bad, and what handlers who have dogs that tend toward overarousal should stop doing... then what they should start doing instead. 

In this conversation, Irith and I talk about what causes demand barking, what we can do about it, and why the advice to "just wait it out" is often completely ineffective. 

If you're moving into AKC or CKC Rally Advanced or Excellent, jumps are a big part of the picture. Your dog needs to be confident enough to take a jump on cue, from a distance, and with you moving alongside them - but also restrained enough not to take it when you haven't asked. That's a lot to ask, and it starts with making sure your dog actually has real value for the jump itself.

Here's how I build that with my dogs.

Dr. Amy Cook and Josefin Linderström, founders of the Social Approach, join me for a deep dive on the topic of touch and our relationships with our dogs. In this episode they share some of the research that's been done on the benefits of touch, their take on how much of our dogs' preferences are nurture vs. nature, and how they'd add touch to training (including as a reinforcer!).  

If you're like most dog trainers and handlers out there, you've started training lots of different behaviors that never quite reached a finished and fluent state. In this episode, Julie and I discuss why that happens, the phases behaviors need to go through, and what it takes to get them there. And, of course, she answers the question of whether it's even possible to "finish" training a behavior.

Does your dog have big feelings about dog agility? Whether they love the sport so much they can't contain themselves or have big feelings about new environments, other dogs, or strangers, in this episode Bronagh and I talk about how big feelings impact your dog's agility performance and what you can do about it.

You've put in the work. Your dog knows the skills. You've practiced the signs, you've drilled the heeling, you've done the homework. And yet, the same mistakes keep showing up, in training, on course, in the ring. The lag that won't go away, the crooked sits, or the dog who checks out right when you need them most. 

Want your dog to come running when you call them? In this episode Crystal Wing steps in as guest host to talk to Melissa Breau about her upcoming class on building a reliable real-life recall, including why reps matter, how reinforcement history builds a better recall, and what to do if you have a recall cue that your dog has learned to ignore.

Curious why and how to teach a contact heeling behavior? Contact heeling is a transport behavior distinctly different from formal obedience heelwork or loose leash walking – and in some instances, it offers significant advantages over either of those other options. In this episode Sarah Rida joins me to talk about why she teaches contact heeling, when it can be helpful, and how to actually begin training this useful skill.

Kelly and Ashley join me in this episode to discuss why canine fitness is sometimes overlooked by dog sports teams, how it can help dogs with impulse control, arousal modulation, and emotional fitness, and the difference between quality movement and a dog who is just active in their environment in a less intentional way.

What does it really take to stand out in obedience and rally? In this epsidoe we look at the invisible skills you and your dog both need to perform and achieve your goals, from careful splitting of behaviors and building behavior chains to managing your own mental game.

Ever wondered how scentwork dogs' abilities change as they age? Many dogs who got started in scent sports right as the sport took off are now hitting their senior years. In this episode, Aleks Woodroffe joins Melissa Breau to talk about how age impacts the nosework dog, what aging gracefully looks like for the scent work team, and how to keep senior sniffers in the game. 

Crate training for sport dogs tends to get lumped into the "basic life skills" category, something dogs are expected to already know before they ever step into a trial environment. But when you really look at what's happening at trials, the ability to relax in a crate is not basic at all. It's a performance skill, and for a lot of dogs, it's a missing one.

If your dog is pacing, whining, staring at everything going on, or staying in a constant state of arousal between runs, that's not just a crate issue. That's something that is going to follow you into your warm-up, into your start line, and ultimately into your performance. The crate is just where we see it most clearly. 

Living with multiple dogs means managing multiple personalities, and like any home with multiple personalities, there will be times when there are disagreements. In this episode, Christina Young and Melissa Breau talk about how to prevent conflict between dogs in your home, the early signs of tension people tend to miss, the difference between management and structure, and how to teach your dogs to actively move away from situations that might escalate.