The behavior chain game

Even a relative beginner to dog training can start creating behavior chains and there are some real advantages to doing so early in your training career. Chains are endlessly more interesting to dogs than single behaviors.  As a rule, single behaviors rely on external...

Lyra – 14 weeks – re-evaluating my plan

Here are a few things I’ve learned or changed  in the past few weeks. I’m using more food.  What can I say…it works.  When I call her into the house, she now gets a cookie about 1/3 of the time.  That’s up quite a bit from what I had hoped for....

Lyra – Blending Behaviors at 12 weeks 6 days

When Lyra showed some proficiency at a series of small behaviors, I wanted to string a few together.  I am starting by teaching her to pick the dumbbell up from the floor, climb on the platform, and return the dumbbell to me. Lyra has a pretty good understanding of...