Regularly I get students in my classes who tell me that they want other family members to attend classes so that everyone will be consistent. Consistency is important in training, but what I mean by consistent and what my students often mean by consistent is often different.

Doors seem to be high voltage issues for so many people with dogs. You answer the door, and your puppy bolts through and greets whomever is on the other side. You want to pop out to the driveway and hand something to your neighbour who is passing by and the door doesn’t latch and your dog is now running down the street and out of control.

I specialize in working with “difficult dogs”. Dogs who bark a lot. Or who lunge and bite. Or who dig up the garden, or chase cats, or toilet in the house. I work with families who have dogs that most people would find difficult to live with. I also work with dogs who are anxious and fearful, or who really don’t have very good self control or resilience.

This week I have been reflecting that my dogs have had the opportunity to do much, much more than most dogs do. One of my recent clients came for help to get her dog to stop lunging and barking at passersby while in the house, but she had no, zero, interest in teaching her dog to do anything else. She didn’t want one of those “fancy trick” dogs; she wanted her dog to be his authentic self, but without barking and lunging at passersby.

A professional dog trainer sees a lot of stupid mistakes over the years, but probably the most common one is the mismatch of dogs and people.  On a friend’s Facebook page recently, I got into a discussion with a rescuer who insisted that any dog slated to die was a better option than a well thought out, carefully placed and carefully researched puppy. 

It would seem that we are the proud owners of our very own, nine week old dragon.  At least that is the joke in our house.  She is endearingly sweet, fluffy, and wickedly smart, but she is a dragon none the less. 

One of the most frequent questions I am asked at social functions is “How do I choose a really smart dog when I am looking for a puppy?”  This is a loaded question that really reflects how little people understand what they are looking for in a dog. 

When we get a puppy, we are happy and looking forward.  We look forward to the times we will spend in the company of our adult dog, and all things we will do and all the fun we will do together.  We realize that there will be work along the way, including taking the dog to the vet, training and cleaning up after him, not to mention the dust bunnies and other household reminders he will leave in his wake. 

I just got an email from a lady who described her 4 year old dog as a puppy, and she wondered if he was old enough to start coming to school because he was driving her crazy.  The problem is that her dog is not a puppy.  The term puppy is roughly equivalent to the human term infant or baby. 

Just what do people mean by active when they talk about active dogs?  Everyone seems to want to be more active these days. If you are an athlete, you want to reach that level of fitness just beyond your current ability and you push yourself to do that.

With our new puppy program we have been hearing from more and more puppy owners and a surprising number of them are bring home their pups at six weeks of age, often without their first set of shots.  Puppies from pet stores may be older when you meet them, but may have been taken from mom as early as four weeks of age. 

At Dogs in the Park we run a drop in gym style program where students can come to 11 classes a week with their dog and learn about dog training. When they have passed enough basic exercises, advanced classes open up to them. When dogs come to training classes we always tell people to practice their skills regularly and often.

The pinnacle of my relationship with my dogs is being able to take them off leash and walk with them anytime, anywhere.  Being ABLE to do so is different from choosing to do so when it would not be in their best interest, but being able to do so is magic.  Taking my dogs to a natural area and letting them run free has been one of the greatest relationship building activities I have ever had the pleasure of engaging in. 

Once upon a time, I was a svelte 148 pounds and just a smidge under five nine.  I rode horses, threw hay bales around and when time permitted, I lifted weights.  I liked lifting weights.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much, and was so active that I liked to test how much I could lift once a week.  My record week, I bench pressed 198 pounds. 

Late last night, at the end of our business day, at around 10:30 in the evening we picked up our business messages. One of the messages came from a new puppy owner who was obviously frantic. “Call quick” the message said. “We don’t know what to do!”

Probably the toughest question you get as a dog behaviour consultant is “why does my dog have this problem”.  Regardless of the problem, aggression, anxiety, fears and phobias, separation anxiety, everyone wants to know why THEIR dog has a behaviour problem. 

Reinforcers and rewards can be powerful tools, but get them wrong and you can get very tangled up. I see a lot of newer trainers want to use only one type of treat, or only bring a tiny amount of good stuff and expect their dog to work for the lowest value items. This is what I think of as the cardboard fallacy.

When a dog comes into my classroom I have a little under a second to determine if that dog is going to be safe to handle and train in the setting we are in.  If we are in a group class, I have a responsibility to my students and their dogs to make sure that everyone is safe at all times. 

When we have had a great week at Dogs in the Park, John and I go out for sushi.  We celebrate when large numbers of clients pay us, and we celebrate when we see progress in our students and we celebrate when we finish a big project. 

As a trainer I get to see a lot of different uses of dog names. People sing their dog’s names, they shout them, they punctuate them, they whisper them and sometimes they just use them over and over again like a broken record. Fido sit. Fido down. Fido come. Fido stay. Fido mat.