Blog

How do you set goals for your training? Ever wondered how leading sports competitors do it? Megan Foster, Petra Ford, and Sharon Carroll recently offered a free webinar on the subject, just in time for the new year — and we've shared it here for those who missed it live!

Erin and I chat about what it takes to keep our aging dogs living their best lives — and how even small adjustments can make a big difference in their lives. 

In this episode I catch up with FDSA founder Denise Fenzi and share a bit about what's happening behind the scenes at the school and what folks should keep an eye out for next year. 

Dr. Daniel Promislow joins me today to share a sneak peek of his Lemonade Conference talk and share his research on aging and his work with the Dog Aging Project.

Amy teaches three different classes, each with a very different approach — in this episode we talk about the what and why of each.  

Jane Ardern joins me to talk about training high drive dogs, share a bit about her own gun dogs, and give us a sneak peek at her upcoming webinar on release cues!  

 Today Jake and I talk about all things Bitey Sports and how being told it wasn't possible to train a dog for Mondio without the 'traditional' tools for the sport led him to do exactly that.

Heather joins me to talk about the AKC Canine Good Citizen program — including what it takes to go from the original CGC test to the newer, more advanced versions. 

This is an excerpt from the book Positive Herding 101: Dog-friendly training by Barbara Buchmayer, shared with permission.

As I read the short email in 2011, I had no idea that destiny was knocking at my door. The message was from a woman in South Africa asking if I would help her train a herding dog using positive methods. She had never trained a dog for herding, nor had she even worked a herding dog. In fact, she knew virtually nothing about herding. I immediately realized it would be foolish to get involved with this project because we would be limited to using email, video, and Skype to communicate tons of precise information and complex concepts. Yet I was deeply into figuring out how to train herding using positive reinforcement and I knew it could be done. So the question became: could two people with the same vision, but very different backgrounds, turn a rambunctious border collie pup into a useful herding dog while 9,000 miles apart?

Interested in learning more about herding - but want to approach it from a positive training perspective? Barb and I talk all about what that means in today's podcast episode! 

Kim joins me to talk about ethological contributions to behavior problems in our pet dogs, and how her L.E.G.S. system can help us look at the bigger picture when working on these issues.

I watched the dog and handler carefully. They were practising their heelwork and it looked lovely! The handler strode out, confident and sure; her dog trotted along next to her, attentive and happy. Then I noticed the fly in the ointment…

"Can you do that again for me please?" I felt bad about breaking into her 'happy place' but that's what I'm paid for, so that's what I was going to do. 

"This time, can you do it without food on you?" Her face fell. Yep, I'd found the problem. Her dog looked lovely because she had food in her left hand. Oops. 

In this episode Laura and I talk about how to build and then maintain behavior chains, and how to change those that may have been taught unintentionally.

Sharon and I chat about what it means to train an atypical dog — what it looks like, and how these dogs end up that way.

Fear and anxiety underly many of the behavior issues in dogs. Understanding the subtleties of how fear works can help us prevent and address it more effectively.

First, it's important to understand how fear develops in the first place. Certain things are innately frightening for animals. This is controlled by genetics (by definition, innate refers to behavior that is not learned). MacLean et al. 2019 found evidence for heritability in a number of traits in dogs including fear. Exactly what individuals are innately fearful of will vary from species to species. The sensitivity to stimuli and intensity of fear will vary from individual to individual. 

As we know, dogs also learn to become frightened based on their experience. Dogs that have higher levels of innate fear will be more susceptible to learned fear as well because there are more things that are frightening to them in the first place.

The development of conditioned fear occurs through the process of classical conditioning where the dog learns to associate a previously neutral stimulus (such as a white lab coat) with an innately frightening stimulus (such as restraint and pain at the veterinary clinic). If we want to get technical, the lab coat becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) for the unconditioned stimulus (US) of pain and restraint. Eventually, the CS of the lab coat comes to produce conditioned fear, which is the conditioned response (CR). The context that the US occurs in can also come to produce the conditioned response. In this example, the veterinary clinic itself can trigger fear, since that is where the pain and restraint are occurring.

Petra Ford and I talk about how fitness can help optimize your dogs performance in the sport or sports of your choice! 

Today we talk heeling with Nancy Gagliardi Little — where people tend to get stuck, why, and how to get back on track and keep moving forward!  

In this episode Deb and I talk about the overlap between zen work and cooperative care, plus Deb shares what, why, and how consent can be important in your training.

This is something that many people new to positive reinforcement (R+) training struggle with: Why can 'fixing' behavior problems (or any training problem) seem so much harder using
positive techniques than using punishment or force? I mean, you're rewarding the hell out of the behaviors you want so why are things still turning to custard? 

Because using positive reinforcement to change established behavior requires that we become PRO-active rather than RE-active trainers – and that is the challenging bit.

Skills are only the most obvious thing you need to train before trialing — in today's episode, Ann and Shade talk about the additional skills you need both inside and outside of the ring to compete successfully.