Conversations with a Dog Trainer

Four Quadrants Dog training requires a basic understanding of what reinforcements and punishments are and how they work.  Your dog being the learner is the only one that can decide what is rewarding to them, as well as what is aversive to them.   The most basic definition of Punishment is something that lessens the likelihood of a behavior from happening.  In dog training we use 4 quadrants to look at actions and decide if they are positive or negative to our dogs, to understand how learning works.  The four quadrants can be difficult to understand but you have to learn how to look at them correctly.  Positive simply means that we add something, Negative means that we take something away.  Reinforcements are something that the learner desires and deems worth working for.  A Punishment is something the learner deems is worth avoiding.   Positive Reinforcement is where we add something the dog wants to work for in order to increas...

After 12 years in this chosen profession, you would think that I could block out the sound of barking dogs. Some days are better than others, but when I’m overwhelmed with the items on my to do list, and my toddler is having a day where his voice volume is stuck at 11 – I have a very hard time being able to block out anything. The constant barking grates my nerves like nails on a chalk board.  Yadi ITD Pembroke Welsh Corgi I am owned by this lovely little man right here. He is a wonderful boy, and very loyal to his family, especially our toddler son. He is SUPER smart and is an Intermediate Tricks Dog Title Holder. He doesn’t like us playing around with Ian to much and he can’t stand to hear him cry in his bedroom because his older brother has told him not to touch his stuff. Boys!!! Yesterday I needed to get some work done as that to do list was reach multipule pages.  I sent the boys to clean up their room while I worked at my desk with a bowl of treats and we practic...

When it comes to training our dogs, we naturally think about teaching them things like to come when we call them, siting to greet our guests, and don’t steal the food off the table or out of our kids’ hands. We don’t typically think of Socialization as part of active training.  We know that Socialization is important, but most people don’t understand the true meaning of socializing a puppy.  Some think all that is needed is to take their puppy to be around other dogs and let them learn puppy social skills from the other dogs, but it is so much more than that.  We have all at one point had a dog, or a friend that had a dog that was terrified of fireworks, or the kid riding a bike though the neighborhood.  Maybe we know of a dog that growls every time they see someone in a baseball hat.  Did you know that proper Socialization can help these problems? The idea of socialization is to help our puppies to become accustomed to all the things that they coul...

In the last century dog training has been under going an evolution of sorts.  It wasn’t so long ago that the lexicon of dog training included words like punishment, compulsion and Intimidation.  The tools of the trade where things designed to inflict pain and cruelty as a way of training dogs to do or not do things the handlers wanted.  Dogs were punished with ear pinches and the like, if they didn’t perform the desired behaviors.  The idea of training a dog was to break the dog of some bad habit it had.   One of the forefathers of scientific study into dog behavior was Edward Thorndike (1874-1949).  He studied the effect of positive reinforcement on dog behavior.  Thorndike called his study the Law of Effect.  His study put forth the idea that the key to understanding how to train dogs was to understand canine behavior.  Behaviors that produce an effect that is desirable are ones that a dog is more likely to repeat, whereas behaviors...

This is an Orientation Series Post So, what is Positive Reinforcement Training? It is the method of using kindness and compassion to teach our dogs that if they willingly do the things we ask it will bring them good things. The science behind how animals learn has taught us that behaviors that are voluntarily offered by our dogs are much stronger and more reliable behaviors than those that we compel our dogs to do out of fear or punishment, also known as aversive methods. Positive Reinforcement or R+ often use the following things: A Marker to tell our dogs that they have done what we are asking them to do. This could be a clicker which is my favorite for working with puppies. Or this could be a verbal word such as Yes, or Good! Your Treats are what is known as a Primary reinforcer, which means that they are the primary reason that your dog is working. Your marker is a secondary reinforcer, which means that it predicts the delivery of a treat. Using a marker ha...

The one thing I hear the most as a trainer is, “my dog just won’t listen to me”. During the first class of my manners courses, I always talk about what reinforcements are. I try to stress to my students that it really doesn’t matter what we (the humans) want to give our dogs, but what they (the dog) deem worth working for. I stress the importance of playing around with things like food and toys to see what your dog likes to work for. Take my own dog, for example, Tazie, a Chihuahua / Corgi Mix, that was always been rather picky over the years about what he wants. Some days he will work all day for just plain training treats in chicken or liver treats.  Then there are the times when something else has his attention and I need to pull out cheese, then you have the days where he only wants to play with a toy and fetch and tug games are the best things in the world. When talking about writing this post with one of my very best friends and fellow trainer, she reminded me of...

Fear is not just a human emotion, dogs suffer from it too. Sadly it’s all too often that we as humans get caught up in our daily lives and simply don’t see the signs until something happens to catch our attention. Then we wonder, where did that come from, “Fluffy has never done that before…” There are three classifications: Anxiety, Fear and Phobias. Dog Trainer and Author Nicole Wilde defines these perfectly in her book Help for the Fearful Dog (A must read for anyone with a dog with fear issues). Anxiety is the feeling of apprehension, anticipation of future danger, in other words, a concern that something bad might happen. Fear is a feeling of apprehension as well, but the emotion is associated with the actual presence of something or someone that frightens the dog. Phobias are profound fear reactions that are out of proportion to the actual threat. Our dogs are not able to say “hey I don’t want to be touched by someone, it really bothers me because…” The only way we have...

Anthropomorphize –  “the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, phenomena, material states, and objects or abstract concepts.”  Eric Goebelbecker Copied from < http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/what-anthropomorphism&gt ;  How many times have you or someone you know referred to a dog as a “four-legged child” or “Fur Kid”? I myself have many times. In itself, there really is nothing wrong with wanting to treat your dog like one of the family but just as you would look out for the well being of your family members, you have to look out for your pet’s as well. Going overboard on how much you baby your pet can be psychologically harmful to their well being.  Dogs need certain things for them to lead healthy happy lives. The top 5 are: 1. A confident leader - not a dominant pack leader, but someone who sets rules and boundaries and helps hold them accountable to them.  Someone who helps them to LEARN how to liv...