Articles to change your thinking
Writing would never be considered my chosen form of communication. I can hear the coffin lid popping up and down on my English teacher’s grave. A sufficient amount of ridicule was thrown in my direction to make the process quite punishing. Which in itself has unwittingly contributed to my current writing style, and a seemingly large amount of bribery and reinforcement (both you see!) is needed to get me onto the keyboard.
In this section you can read my monthly articles from our email newsletter. You can subscribe through the “Join our Email List”.
Reinforcement in the way of feedback, or requests for further explanation are received with pleasure! If you wish to re-print the article please let me know and my ego expects credit where due.
Original published in 2004 the pdf for the Genabacab Games are now available as a free download: Genabacab. Please enjoy and spread!
She was not the pup I would have chosen. She sat in my lap as limp as a ragdoll, ears down on the sides of her head, tail tucked up under her tiny pink belly. My heart sank. It felt as though a lead weight had been dropped on my chest. How could this tiny weak soul possibly survive - mentally and emotionally - the 24 hours of travel via noisy cars, buses and planes, from her birth home in England to her new home in California?
I have some sympathy for anyone seeking to become a professional in the dog business. There is either a joyous lack of career path structure or a complete dog’s dinner of choices for the unsuspecting ambitious. Actually in comparison to many current dog dinners you either get the same uniform, bland, taste dry offerings 365 days a year, or a mixture of dead carcasses of varying amounts of pleasure and work involved. I evolved along the joyous lack of structure, which deviated through many enjoyable vistas and would not be called the shorter route. Fun though.
Creativity in Dogs you may ask? What on earth for? Well, if you are asking this question, then you are probably not interested in this article. You are probably also not one of the millions of people who watch the documentaries and reality type shows on TV where “unbelievable acts” are performed by pet or working animals such as police dogs, search and rescue dogs, guide dogs and so on.
“A behaviour is only short lived in the scheme of things, but the attitude is there for life.”
I am often asked why my dogs have so much fun in training. They ooze sunshine and joy as soon as I select the clicker and take my seat. For them the situation represents many things of value:
Are you running on clicker fuel? May 2010
It is reaching 15 years since clicker training popped over the UK horizon. This was an exciting but uncertain time in dog training, just getting hold of a clicker was a major achievement, and our only opportunity to see any clicker training was from a converted video costing an exorbitant amount. Don’t Shoot The Dog hinted at the potential and like many enquiring folk we propped open the book and gave it a go. We explored the internet and learned many of the academically based principles.
Sheepdog, Trafficdog, Dogdog? Jan 2010
Sheep dogs, or herding breeds are designed for very specific tasks. Their brain responds with fixed action patterns that are triggered by movement A fixed action pattern is an inherited “hard-wired” pattern of behaviours. They need to control movement.
Assessment: Love it or hate it, it makes you grow. Oct 2009
Most of us, especially in the dog training world, evolve through an onslaught of judgement: from whether we should have the dog we have or not, to whether we are making the best job of training it. Passing judgement on other people’s dogs seems to be a favourite and highly reinforcing pastime.
Teaching Energy Aug 2009
I have just started a new class at Wagmore. A blend of training as for sports agility and a broad range of fitness training for the dogs. Not only are the participants learning to change the energy movements of their dog but also their own.
One for the Pups: The NO period May 09
Time and his Quinky siblings are just rising 5 months. He is developing right along on schedule. This week his favourite activity is playing at
And nature does not make is easy for us. I have taught my puppy to sit for a piece of cooked chicken. A cube about half the size of my
I have not lived with a single dog in over 35 years, and I somewhat envy those who enjoy that one to one friendship, it would be rather
I was a dog trainer before I was a clicker trainer – and this colours my perception of how I apply the technology. It didn’t take me long to
This has been an extraordinary week for Team GB at the Olympics with the level of success surpassing expectations. The noticeable difference
This is possibly one of greatest opportunities to showcase natural movement. A well built dog can be visually enjoyed moving around the
Your method of communicating will work on several levels and advancing your skills is not about using complex strategies but have exquisite and
As trainers who live in the world of reinforcement it becomes our responsibility to explore the depths of reinforcement and discover the
I’ve just returned from a rather mind stretching trip to the USA. Beginning in Texas with Jesús Rosales-Ruiz group of students at North
Three cheers for the dogs’ desire to seek attention or approval. Can you imagine what living with a dog would be like if they were indifferent
"Reward your Dog". We've heard this many, many times in many various formats. It takes a lot of experience to get the best from a reward -
It is very tempting to focus your attention on teaching your dog new behaviours - in fact this is often the sexy part of clicker training, and
Teaching Dogs Magazine
Somewhere along the way we have moved from being dog trainers to dog teachers. Less and less we try to make the dogs learn the way we would, or even guess at how they would learn. In my experience they are MUCH better at learning than people, and given the right opportunities will exceed our teaching skills. The more we can set them up to self teach, with guidelines for safety, then the more comfortable they are at learning - and the longer that learning lasts.
Teaching Dogs was the magazine Learning About Dogs published for 6 years featuring many of the top trainers from around the world. We still have several back copies available if you would like to contact us for more information on shipping costs - the Magazines are free. Our library contains some of the great articles plus regular training articles from the Monthly Newsletter. (use the “Join our Email list” to receive this).
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