The purpose of this brief article is to demonstrate the value of identifying “good dog trainers” and incorporating this knowledge into your veterinary practice. The following recommendations represent a consensus document compiled by the authors as one of the final projects in the Advanced Applied Clinical Behavioral Medicine course at the 2004 NAVC PGI. Many of the authors are now using these recommendations in their practices in ways that have increased their productivity and altered the way they now practice medicine.
Category: Training dogs
Limiting Learning Potential When Training Dogs
Here's an interesting point taken from a presentation found (Yale University School of Medicine) on learning. "If instruction is heavily based on one style of learning over others, "mismatched" students may often feel uncomfortable while "matched" students may not develop critical skills aligned with other ways of learning." This reminded me again of my experience …
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Anecdotal vs. scientific knowledge applied when dog training
Additionally, I was reminded by Dr. Pilly’s training that discouraging using “no reward markers” was something I would never do. See my reasoning and interpretation of this here: Words! Good and Bad? Using No Reward Marker, It’s Your Choice!
More Dog Training Wizardry! No! Seven Minutes of a Beautiful View!
This turned out AWESOME! Not just because my dog Boudicca is a star, but the view is AWESOME!!!
Six Minutes of Dog Training Wizardry!!
This could not have been planned! But it turned out AWESOME! If only dog training was as easy as being a wizard and waving a magic wand! Nope, that's not really very realistic, we and our dogs have to live in reality and reality is, it takes a lot longer than a few weeks or months to raise happy well-adjusted and trained dogs. Come down off your cloud and get real, get the right help so that you too can have a dog like this. And without using punishments that leave marks visually and mentally on your dog/s.
Lack of play behavior in dogs may be indicator for lack of well-being!
It’s not unusual for dog trainers to use a dog’s willingness to take treats, during training, as an indicator for lack of anxiety and/or fear. Given in the context of behavior modification, it’s often necessary to move reactive, fear and/or anxiety related dogs away from stimuli (targets) to reduce the reactivity cycle and facilitate the eating of treats. The premise is, when dogs actively take treats, during behavior modification, they are building new brain connections, using classical conditioning, that are more adaptive in those contexts, because dogs are learning (operant conditioning) to perform alternative behavior/s that are more desirable.