Blog
Concept (goals) or Criteria (process)?
The majority of behaviors that I teach are accomplished via reinforcing specific criteria. I know exactly how I want the dog to look at each step of the process as they move towards the final behavior. This is a process-driven approach. Other things I teach as...
What Happens If
A few years ago I had a student in a class who had spent a fair amount of time trying to teach her dog to pick up an object by shaping it. For various reasons she had not succeeded. Since the purpose of the class was not to teach the retrieve, nor was it to discuss...
Handling errors by making the dog ‘more wrong’
Here's an entire video of my dog making errors finding front, mostly due to loss of attention. I am primarily demonstrating the technique of making the dog "more wrong". The basic sequence is that he returns to me, drops his toy for another repetition of...
Looking at the Fundamentals
What you see here in this video is the basis of all of my training; engagement, requesting work, and operating within a few very basic rules. First THE DOG starts the training session - this ensures that the dog recognizes that work is a privilege and neither a right...
But…drills have a place too!
Here is another one-minute compilation of skills - I call these "Drills" because I probably did each of them a few times before moving on, they are super quick and fluid, and I am likely to reinforce close to every effort. This was pulled from a session of about eight...
