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

I am making two New Year’s Resolutions for my dogs, and I invite you to make your own versions of these.

1. To appreciate and cherish my dogs every single day.

2. To do more fun things with them, and to work training into that.

Now, people don’t always keep their resolutions, and of course I am no different than anyone! But I do have an advantage… I used to teach time management classes, and so I am not just making resolutions, I am also making plans.

Actually I already do #1, but I want to be sure to express my love fully to our dogs.  Recently our Rottweiler Lola has developed a habit that helps with this. When she hurt a front paw a few months ago, I got down on the floor with her each evening and gave her a  massage, specially focusing on both front legs — the one she wasn’t using much and the one that had extra work to do as a result.

Well, after about three days, she had stopped limping. As my husband and I sat watching television, I didn’t have dog massage on my mind. But Lola got up from her bed and came and sat directly in front of me. She stared intently into my eyes.

I got the point… and so began a regular habit of giving both dogs massages every evening. I plan to keep this up throughout the new year. Some evenings more, some less, no doubt.  I think I will pull out my excellent DVD on Bodywork for Dogs — that link goes to my description of it.

More Dog Training… in the Datebook!

My dogs are generally well enough trained that when I get busy, I don’t always keep up with training new things. But we all enjoy it so much when I do, that this year I am putting into my datebook for Saturdays:  SOMETHING with the DOGS! Since I use a computer program for keeping track of things, it just took me a moment to write it in all 52 times.

Actually, I sometimes recommend that if you get my weekly newsletter which comes out on Tuesday mornings, that you can use that as a reminder to do SOMETHING with your DOGS.

Whatever you do, happy new year!

And here’s a fun video from youtube that may inspire your training: