Lately I’ve been working a lot with Sword, a protection dog in training. Protection dogs are a big investment, usually around $20,000 to $50,000. Today we were working on Sword’s sit command. He often understands this command to mean sitting at someone’s side, but right now I want to train him to sit in front […]
One and Only: My Most Useful Principle
Someone asked me an interesting question recently, and I wanted to share it with you. The question was this: “You have over 20 years of experience working with dogs, so you’ve seen a lot of things. Given that, if your experience and knowledge was erased, but if you were able to keep mastery of one […]
Walking the Walk: Minimizing Distractions, Maximizing Obedience
A question I get frequently is “How aloud I walk my dog?” I know that sounds silly, but all people are really wondering is whether they should let their dog sniff around and wander or keep their dog next to them the whole time. There is no absolute answer to this question. We handle this […]
Got Headaches? Using Focus To Transform Your Dog
In a previous post I spoke a bit about my family vacation in Flathead Lake, Montana. We stayed in a beautiful house with a little dock and an orchard. This morning I sat on the dock being very quiet, trying to blend into the background, and watching the deer in the orchard and the birds […]