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Should you use an “in training” sign for your dog?
Taking your training on the road is a great way to add some distractions and work on generalizing new behaviors. However, it is much harder to control distractions and other interruptions outside of the home. If your dog gets overexcited or nervous about other people or dogs, it can make training in public more difficult. This is why many people choose to use signs on vests or leash sleeves, to try communicate with others and avoid issues. Signage like this can be helpful when you are out and about, but it can also cause issues if not used appropriately. Here are some tips for using signage when training in public. Keep it short, keep it visible! Vests that have multiple signs with lots of wording can be helpful if you have a lot of information to get across, but it also makes it harder for people to read. If your
Are you tracking your training?
Dog training is a dynamic process. This means we often have to change or adjust our training plan over time. However, we don’t know how to change our plan if we don’t know what impacts our current plan is/is not having on behavior. There are many factors that influence our dog’s behavior and learning, and it is important that we be prepared to adjust our training to account for these factors. By measuring and monitoring our training, we can ensure that our plan is working and make changes when it is not. Behavior modification can be a slow process. Tracking our training can also help us see the progress we are making when our memory fails us. This can help keeps up motivated, which is important when you are working on a long-term goal! It can also help us notice patterns of behavior that may inform our training. What to
Why I quit my hospital job to walk dogs
I’m not a dreamer. That is, I don’t view life through rose-colored glasses thinking that all my wishes will come true like some sort of Lifetime movie. I laugh at the utter idiocy of those movies. I’m a pragmatist, to a fault. I never assume the best will happen, because I view life as random chaos moving infinitely forward in a unchangeable pattern set forth from a huge cosmic explosion of energy dating back 13 billion or so years. I don’t believe in free will, karma, or destiny. In the infamous words of Mitch Hedberg, “I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re goin’, and hook up with them later.” Don’t I sound like a shot glass full of fun? It probably sounds like a depressing way to live but not for me. I simply observe the world in a way that feels logical
“I’m not a PEZ dispenser” and our relationship with our dogs.
“I’m not a PEZ dispenser, I want my dog to listen because I told them to.” This conversation happened in just about the last place you could imagine. Seriously, go ahead and guess. Where do you think I heard this sentence? You’re wrong. It was in my gynecologist’s office. Going in for my yearly check-up, my doctor and I engaged in the usual small talk. She hadn’t seen me since I quit my job at the hospital. I enthusiastically told her how I had begun apprenticing with a dog trainer, working at a shelter, and looking into certification programs to become a trainer myself. That’s when she started telling me about her experience with going to training classes. She said how much it helped her dog… but not at first. The first training center she went to had them giving the dogs lots of treats. She expressed how she disliked
BLOG POSTS
Should you use an “in training” sign for your dog?
Taking your training on the road is a great way to add some distractions and work on generalizing new behaviors. However, it is much harder
Are you tracking your training?
Dog training is a dynamic process. This means we often have to change or adjust our training plan over time. However, we don’t know how
Why I quit my hospital job to walk dogs
I’m not a dreamer. That is, I don’t view life through rose-colored glasses thinking that all my wishes will come true like some sort of
“I’m not a PEZ dispenser” and our relationship with our dogs.
“I’m not a PEZ dispenser, I want my dog to listen because I told them to.” This conversation happened in just about the last place