Off Leash Romps for Loker!
For those that don’t know, Loker has had to be on leash for the last few months because our current fence is short and he can hop over it without effort. We’ve worked hard on coming when called and auto-check ins and I’ve recently taken the plunge into letting Loker off leash more often in…
Why You Shouldn’t Need Verbal Encouragement in Training
I’ve caught myself talking to my dogs to encourage them to keep going. Usually, I try to remain silent to let them focus, but sometimes I’ll talk to try to get them to keep going. When I saw this pop up in a recent conversation, I realized it might be a good topic to discuss…
Follow Up: The Premack Principle
After a previous post about finding unusual motivators that might with challenging dogs, I received an inquire asking how they could use the Premack Principle with their dog to reinforce loose leash walking. I figured this might be a question many people might be wondering about so I decided to take Loker out on a…
Calming Supplement for Dogs
As many of you already know, Loker is very anxious and usually goes from 0-60 in about 2 seconds. He doesn’t really have an in between. About three weeks ago I decided to start him on L-Theanine or SunTheanine as recommended by Suzanne Clothier back at the February seminar. According to Wikipedia, it can cross…
Trust in Your Training – The Next Milestone
Our new yard has a fence that is about 2-3ft high. It’s nothing to Loker who has springs for legs. Luckily, he’s never had the opportunity to jump it, but he does often put his front paws to peer over it to smell the yard over. After being able to call him off a squirrel…
How to Address Constant Whining from Your Dog
About a week ago Loker had, what I can only describe as, a nervous break down. Loker began whining insistently anytime we were home, but not around him. One night, he was even up at 6am whining for about 30 minutes. We restrained from telling him to be quiet just incase it was attention seeking…
Less Really is More!
I was browsing a book at the bookstore earlier this week and it talked about how dogs seem to learn in between training sessions. After a very short training session, they come back next time performing it better than the previous session. I have observed this with my own dogs. (Are they practicing at night or…
Tidy Training
I love reading other blogs, one of my new favorites that I haven’t yet had much time to read yet is one by Mary Hunter. She just graduated with a Masters in Behavior Analysis from the University of North Texas. Her blog is called Stale Cheerios. Her recent article reviewing what she had learned at a…