The Lesson Of The Coonskin Cap

Ben Franklin was one smart dude.

He understood human behavior like no one else and his coonskin cap proves it.

You see, Ole Ben spent a lot of time in France convincing them that they should pack up and head over to the States to give us a hand opening a can of whoop ass on the British.

The French loved Ben, but even though he was one of the smartest guys to walk the planet during his time, even though he invented loads of amazing contraptions to help and entertain people, even though he wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac, it did not change the fact that he was from America.

No matter what Ben did he was always, always going to be their country bumpkin friend from the backwoods of America.

Did he fight it?

Did he try to prove how brilliant he was?

Did he wake up every morning and show all of his accomplishments to change their minds?

Nope.

Ben put on his coonskin cap and played up his role. He played the part and got just about everything he asked for.

This is a good lesson to remember when you are training your dog.

You need to play the role when you are training to get your dog to do what you want. I was thinking about this trying to help a friend train his dog.

This friend is big and has a tough time praising his dog and acting a little goofy when his dog does something right.

His dog is extremely friendly and very sensitive. I tried telling him that he had to change in order to get better results with his dog.

He kept saying, “That is not who I am. I can’t raise my voice and get excited about this.”

I shared the Ben Franklin story with him and told him that as the trainer he had to change his behavior in order to change his dog’s behavior.

He disagreed.

What are you gonna do? This is common. A lot of people believe that the dog has to change.

It starts with your behavior. To get the best results, you need to look at what you’re doing first. You sometimes need to put the coonskin cap on.

And this is extremely important when you are teaching the recall (come when called) command because when your dog is off-leash your dog has options.

She can run away or run to you and you HAVE to pay attention to your body language. Standing a certain way can actually communicate to your dog to stay away from you. The tone of your voice can make it impossible for your dog to move towards you.

So you  need to be aware of your behavior first.

Anyway, I wrote more about this in my report, “8 Incredibly Simple Steps To Get Your Dog To Come When Called”

It’s F-R-E-E and you can get it by going here NEXT:

Always Come When Called

Best,

Eric