For a very good guide to all sorts of dog training processes and dog behavior challenges, I use and recommend Clickertraining ...that link goes to the description of this terrific ebook you download immediately, wherever you are! -- Rosana

If you have a puppy, you have to deal with puppy biting. It’s just a natural part of how they explore their world and their interactions with other dogs and with humans.

But what to do?

The OUCH AND AVOID method works really well. Read the rest of this entry

1. Dog training would take away from your time to watch television.

2. Your dog is alpha and won’t let you.

3. If God meant for dogs to sit, they would be born with chairs on their bottoms.

4. The sound of the clicker might wake the baby. Read the rest of this entry

I’ve just spent the past 45 minutes with a DVD called CLICKER PUPPY (link goes to Dogwise).

It’s a program featuring children and teens (ages 5 to 13) and puppies (as young as 8 weeks to 5 months). The children are clicker training the puppies, and very quickly too. Some very young puppies learn to sit and do a variety of other things in just a few minutes! How much training each puppy has had is mentioned… several had had none beforehand.

Given the nature of the participants, the program is very spontaneous and appears more like a good quality home production than a slick professional program. This is much of the charm of the program for me.

To my mind, the best use of the program would be showing it to children as part of helping them get the basics of clicker training. I’m sure any dog-loving child would want to try it themselves!

Clicker training puppies is arguably the best way to train them, and this program should help with that. I think it would be a bit basic for adults… or is it just that the kids make it look so easy? Read the rest of this entry

Have you considered a dog training career? Sometimes people ask my suggestions for how to become a dog trainer. Now I have a recommendation for an up-to-date resource that really spells out the whole picture: The Dog Trainer Handbook, by Shelly Brouwer, who is herself a professional dog trainer.

She starts out with a bit about her own career, and then she asks, “Why Do You Want to Be a Dog Trainer?” That’s the first chapter. It is followed by other chapters about your education: the types of training that will help you in a dog training career, the top three places in the US to get an education in the best methods of dog training, and what topics you will need to learn. She also covers continuing your education once you are a professsional.

The rest of the book is about how to start and run your dog training business. It covers the various kinds of training services that you could offer (group classes, puppy training, agility, and more), what equipment you will need for your business, what kinds of places you can work out of, and the like. There is a chapter on class types, sizes, and fees. She also offers advice on how deal with your clients, how to make appointments, and so on. It’s good to remember that a big part of a dog training business is about people! (Yes, training them at times!)

In today’s economy, is a dog training career a feasible choice? I would think so, since training dogs is something that is always needed. It is something that can be done part-time, and it usually requires some evening and weekend work.

Consider your own personality a bit.

• Are you patient and enthusiastic both?
• Are you confident with dogs? This is not the same thing as being fearless… professional dog trainers have a healthy regard for the damage a dog’s jaws can do, and they tend to become adept quite quickly at reading the body language of the dogs they work with!
• Would you like to run your own business or work for an existing one?

Want to find out more? Do take a look at the website for The Dog Trainer Handbook!