Teaching a Leave It behaviour is a great way to begin teaching your dog about self-control, especially around people, other dogs, or other items that he REALLY wants to investigate. It’s a way to teach him to ask for permission instead of just grabbing. Sometimes…

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to training pet dogs: Reinforcement-Based methodologies and Aversive-Based methodologies. Training plans that are based in positive reinforcement are designed to set the dog up to make good choices, which gives trainers the opportunity to reward…

There are some dogs that are naturals around the water; they require no training and sometimes seem more comfortable with swimming than with walking on dry land. Other dogs, however, don’t have that natural instinct or desire to swim for hours, but that doesn’t mean…

For many years, describing dogs as “alpha” and “dominant” have been a big part of dog training culture. Dogs that are difficult to handle or that don’t get along with other dogs or people are labeled with one or both of those adjectives as a…

Dogs are intelligent, active creatures. Many of the breeds that are popular today were originally bred to do something – herd livestock, help us hunt game, guard their property from intruders, or exterminate vermin for example. While many of us don’t really have a need for a…

The desire to see changes in your dog’s behaviour is completely understandable, especially if his behaviour is causing a problem! Most pet owners want to know how much work they are in for and when they can expect to see the finished results when they…

There is an old saying that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” If you have an older dog, you will be relieved to know that this just isn’t true. Older dogs are more than capable of learning new behaviours, and it’s never too…

We all love our dogs, but at some point, most of us have to come to terms with some form of problem behaviour. Understanding why your dog does what he does can help use to determine how to handle the problem correctly so that we…

I Promise that He Can Do It at Home! One of the best things about working with clients in dog training classes is seeing how excited they are to show me the progress that they have made with training their dog in between classes. It’s…

One of the most common misconceptions about dog body language is that a dog that wags his tail is always friendly. This just isn’t true. Dogs wag their tails for a variety of different reasons and there are plenty of dogs that have bitten a…