In this live I talk about why I do bite sports.

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Train the dog in front of you. What does that mean?

Seeing as I wrote a book with this title, I have opinions about it!

Two dogs can have the same issue, and the solutions can be radically different. At the end of the day, you have to know your dog… I give examples in this live to help you understand the concept.

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If you like the minutiae of dog training, you might like this live.

Here I talk about the challenge I have with my dog in the Mondio ring search exercise… He prefers to bite than to bark! I talk about a “good training” solution which involves breaking it down into small pieces…small splits are good dog training.

I talk about the fact that it didn’t work. I talk about brainstorming to come up with an answer.

And what all of this makes me think about? One challenge of training dog sports with positive reinforcement is lack of tradition around solutions to problems. Of course this is not a problem in Dog sports that are traditionally positive reinforcement based, but it absolutely is in sports with little to no tradition of +r problem-solving, because these sport have rather few +r folks playing the game.

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Does positive reinforcement training mean withholding half of the information the dog needs to to be successful? Would the dog find more clarity if you included aversives? Would that actually be a relief to the dog?

I give my thoughts on that here.

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Life is complex. Dogs are one piece of the puzzle of complexity.

Be open to the challenge of varied perspectives. Be respectful! And try to make things better.

Dog trainers can do that. You’re more than a dog trainer. You can change lives, and I’m not just making that up.

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Your words are your power. Do not take someone else’s words to placate them.

Choose your words carefully. Explain what you need to explain. And reserve the right to say…

It depends. I need more information.

Getting a group of people together is easy when you simplify complex topics. Who doesn’t appreciate simplicity?

Well. Me. As long as life remains complex, I will explain in as many words as I need to say what I want to say.

Don’t give your power away. Choose your words thoughtfully, and insist that others respect what you said as opposed to what they think they heard. or maybe what they wanted to hear. what words did you say? Pain, uncomfortable? Aversive? Management? A training tool? Be specific, and insist that others respect your words, or end the conversation.

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Continuing on with basic principles around force free training.

Here I introduce counter conditioning, desensitization and habituation. Xen was along for the ride, so he illustrates some of the principles - what do you do when it gets too intense?

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Does reinforcement history or emotion/instinct drive behavior?

Both. Emotion drives “behavior” - the general category of things we do.

And reinforcement history drives the specific behavior which the learner chooses, from amongst all of the available options.

The challenge here is that the word “behavior” means both the general category and a specific choice of a specific behavior.

Both are happening. I spend a few extra minutes talking about this during this live.

Plus - note how adorable my dog is. I mean…I can barely stand his cuteness!