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The best in health, wellness, and positive training from America’s leading dog experts

Advanced Dog Training

Utilizing Target Training for Better Leash Walking

Does your dog know how to target? If not, the two of you may be missing out on one of the most versatile behaviors to come along since the rise in popularity of the positive dog training philosophy.

Teach Your Dog to Help With Chores Around the House

Okay, I'll confess: I'm a lousy housekeeper. So when I first saw the YouTube videos starring Jessie the Jack Russell Terrier, who has been trained to do countless household chores, I found the idea of training my dogs to help me with the housework quite appealing.

Fluency and Generalization in Dog Training

Fluency and generalization training methods prepare your dog to respond and behave correctly in ANY situation. In dog training, generalization means that your dog can apply a concept to many situations; he knows that Sit!" means he should sit whether he's home

Train Your Dog to Target

During the two-plus decades that I trained my dogs in old-fashioned obedience classes, I never learned the pervasively useful and versatile behavior of targeting. The closest I came was the narrow application to go-outs" in advanced level competition classes – not really the same thing at all. Even today
A white dog on a leash looks intently at its owner for hand commands.

Dog Training Basics: How to Teach a Cue

While our dogs are born with all sorts of natural canine inclinations – like searching out food, investigating scents, romping with friends – “listen to words from humans” is not part of their default program. With the right kind of teaching, responding to your cues will become a dog’s go-to choice because it is the most reliable route to the things he wants.

Dog Trainers Use of Generalizing a Behavior

But he does it at home!” Usually uttered in a plaintive wail, this common dog owner complaint is often heard in dog training classes, among other places. When one of my students says this, I reassure them that I believe their dog probably does perform the behavior in question with a high degree of reliability in the comfort of his own home. The fact that he won’t do it in class is usually a generalization issue; the owner has only practiced the behavior with her dog at home. He doesn’t know he’s supposed to do it other places. According to authors Mary Burch, PhD, and Jon Bailey, PhD, in their excellent book, How Dogs Learn, “Generalization occurs when behaviors are seen in contexts other than those in which they were originally trained.” Simply stated, this means practicing with your dog in different places, at different times of the day, under different conditions, in the presence of different people, dogs, and a variety of other distractions.

Latest Blog

How “Bird Flu” Could Threaten Your Dog

The “bird flu”, or avian influenza, has been around for a long time; it’s circulated in wild birds since the late 1990s. But like all viruses, it mutates over time—and influenza viruses are known to mutate very quickly. What’s more, some emerging strains are deadlier than others.