My friend was struggling. She was trying to teach her service dog to pick up items on command. She wanted her dog to pick up specific items when she asked for them. This is a requirement for service dogs and she felt like giving up.
She was frustrated. Her dog was frustrated.
Lucky for her she happens to be friends with the Amazing Dog Training Man and I quickly pointed out to her why she was having the problems she was. We made one small adjustment and her dog is now on the way to successfully retrieving items on command.
The reason we struggle with dog training is simple. I can sum it up in one word:
CONFUSION!
The dog owner is confused, the dog is confused and this leads to frustration and often failure. The amount of information available to dog owners is staggering and trying to wade through all of it is overwhelming. There is a lot of misinformation, distortions, and myths.
The biggest myth of all is this one:
“Only use positive reinforcement to train a dog.”
This is extremely dangerous and UNETHICAL advice. It is the reason I wrote the book “The Deadly Dog Training Myth.” I tell every client I work with there are two steps that have to happen with every dog I work with:
- Your dog’s well being always comes FIRST.
- Results.
So how can you make sense of dog training? I was recently interviewed by Sean McDaniel, a Seattle based dog trainer and creator of The Dog’s Way Podcast. This riveting and entertaining interview will explain how dog training is successfully accomplished using the four quadrants of behavior.
If you’re struggling to understand dog training and behavior you will want to drop what you’re doing, grab your favorite beverage and hunker down in your favorite chair to listen to this jaw dropping, incredibly insightful interview.
Show Highlights
- How to make dog training easy to understand
- The four behavior quadrants explained and how to use them
- The Deadly Dog Training Myth explained
- Discussion on saying NO to your dog
- Why dogs end up in shelters and how to avoid it
- Why positive only dog training is dangerous for your dog
- How The Amazing Dog Training Man became depressed and almost left dog training
- How dogs pay the price for bad training
- Scientific dog training explained