How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD (Formerly known as School For The Dogs Podcast)

Latest Episodes:

Mean Talk, Mouse Traps & Water Guns: Rudd Weatherwax’s “Lassie Method” Jul 24, 2020

Show notes

A few weeks ago, Annie interviewed Jon Provost, who played the little boy Timmy on the Lassie TV series in the 1950s and 60s. He talked a little bit about Rudd Weatherwax, who was Lassie's owner and trainer. Jon talked about how Weatherwax only trained with praise and rewards, and Annie described him as "progressive." After the episode aired, however, she found some old videos that showed training methods that suggested otherwise. In this episode, Annie reads from Weatherwax's 1971 book, The Lassie Method: Raising & Training Your Dog With Patience, Firmness & Love, and considers the pros and cons of his suggested training techniques. Notes: Free ebook on dog training techniques you can use on people: http://schoolforthedogs.com/people 1971 footage promoting the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMrD3wO2m0I The Lassie Method: Raising & Training Your Dog With Patience, Firmness & Love

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

So a few weeks ago, I interviewed Jon Provost, the actor who played Timmy on the TV show Lassie when he was a kid. And we talked just a little bit in the episode about Lassie's trainer and owner, whose name was Rudd Weatherwax. And he was kind of a big deal in the world of commercial dog training in the early to mid 1900s. He trained Asta for The Thin Man. He trained Toto for The Wizard of Oz, but Rudd Weatherwax wasn't really the focus of the interview.

And, you know, I admit in some episodes I have more of an agenda than in other episodes. Some episodes of this podcast, I am just interviewing people who have done interesting things with dogs or are working with dogs. I like stories about people and dogs, and I like sharing those stories, but of course I am dog trainer. I am opinionated. I have very specific points of view on the subject matter.

But two things. One, I think I just assumed that someone who spent so much time on set with a dog and their trainer would be able to recognize what they were doing as far as training goes. Like I think I just take for granted at this point that someone could break down what someone's training methods are or what their approach is. But in reality, I know things can seem kind of opaque when you're watching training happening. And if you don't know what to look for or what you might not want to be seeing. I mean, I don't know. Also I'm talking to a man who is recollecting things that happened 60 years ago when he was a kid.

The other thing of course, being that Rudd Weatherwax maybe really was all praise and reward with Lassie on set or whenever Lassie was with Jon Provost. They worked together very closely for many, many years, the dog who played Lassie and Rudd Weatherwax. Interestingly, they only ever had one Lassie at a time. I learned that speaking with Jon. Anyway, that dog, whichever Lassie it was at the time, and Rudd Weatherwax I'm guessing had a very strong bond. And I'm sure that that dog was tuned into understanding what Rudd Weatherwax wanted with very, very little force or coercion necessary because they had such a history working together.

And also, because again this is me guessing, that they did a lot of training for him to learn new things off set. So by the time they got onset, it was more about maintaining those behaviors, which could be done using positive reinforcement. Cause that's the way that you're going to encourage behaviors that you want to keep happening. And if you're doing something on a set in front of a camera where they might do several takes, you want behaviors that are going to keep happening...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

Is Dominance Really A Thing? Cesar Millan, Libertarianism + A Dog Named Pizza Jul 17, 2020

Show notes

Before she became a dog trainer, Annie assumed that understanding dogs' supposed obsession with dominance was an important part of being a good trainer. She pushed her 18-pound Yorkiepoo into alpha rolls so he'd know she was boss. She yelled in his face, and made sure he never entered through a doorway before her, because Cesar Millan said that that would make the dog think he was the one in charge.
The whole idea that dog behavior, and the way dogs learn, had anything to do with science simply did not compute; the notion of them existing in a kind of Lord-Of-The-Flies quest for supreme power seemed plausible and not something worth reconsidering. After graduating dog training school, her thoughts on "dominance" shifted 180 degrees. Now, ten years spent working as a professional trainer, they've shifted yet again...
Bonus Q+A: Pizza the mini goldendoodle (@the_pizza_dood) is obsessed with stealing collapsible water bowls at the park. Annie suggests a three pronged approach to curing him of the habit of destroying silicone water bowls that belong to other dogs.
Products mentioned in this episode:
The Zisc Flying Disc by West Paw
https://storeforthedogs.com/products/zisc-flying-disc
West Paw Toys
https://storeforthedogs.com/collections/west-paw-designs
Collapsible Slow Food Bowl
https://storeforthedogs.com/products/collapsible-slow-food-bowl
Learn more about Parvene Farhoudy
http://behaviormatters.com/about-parvene-farhoody/
Books by Raymond Coppinger
Dogs (with Lorna Coppinger)
https://amzn.to/2UuJUzA
What Is A Dog (with Lorna Coppinger)
https://amzn.to/30mDhTZ
How Dogs Work (with Mark Feinstein)
https://amzn.to/32qcXuV
The (now embarrassing) 2007 article Annie wrote in The NY Times about people wanting to become dog trainers: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/fashion/27DOGS.html
---
Partial Transcript:
Annie:
Hello, human friends, and dog listeners, woof to you. I wanted to talk today about dominance. So in the three decades of life that I lived before becoming a dog trainer, I am pretty sure that I thought the word dominant was as much a part of dog training as boiling water was to cooking. It was just an essential part of the whole thing that was dog training. Dog training at that time being something that I think I thought of as, you know, something that happens when you sign up for a class or you hire a professional, and that dog training wasn't happening really outside of those times...
Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/
Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

Puppy Socialization In The Time Of Quarantine Jul 10, 2020

Show notes

Nothing makes people want puppies quite like a global pandemic! Those who are raising puppies during quarantine may face some challenges when it comes to socialization. But, if you succeed at doing a good job with it -- if you can clear the unusual hurdles that new dog owners have to face right now -- you will be paving the way for a great future for your dog and while developing your own training abilities.

Annie discusses what socialization is, how to spot signs of possible stress, and how to start at "criteria: zero" in order to build new and appropriate behaviors (and keep bad ones from happening). She talks about using food in socialization, using the right toys, and making use of sounds and objects you might be able to find in your home and enlisting neighbors in a safe way. She also talks about how to help your young dog get adequate puppy playtime, even if that means you... have to pretend to be a puppy.

FREE EBOOK on The Dog Training Triad: http://schoolforthedogs.com/triad

Get access to our private Facebook Group with the purchase of any of our new self-paced online courses. See http://schoolforthedogs.com/courses

Additional resources:

Annie's webinar on raising a puppy during quarantine: https://event.webinarjam.com/go/replay/81/k6v60c91ulrt9oi1

Dog Body Language Demonstated By A Human with Em Beauprey: https://event.webinarjam.com/go/replay/148/k6v60c5vhns2s1

First Episode of The Dog Whisperer featuring Nunu and Kane (both being flooded -- but lots of good examples of stress signals): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x72q489

More on Slow Food Bowls: https://storeforthedogs.com/blogs/news/extend-the-joy-of-your-dogs-mealtime-with-slow-food-bowls

K9 Sports Sack: https://storeforthedogs.com/products/k9-sport-sack-rover-backpack-1

Flirt Poles: https://storeforthedogs.com/products/flirt-poles
---
Partial Transcript:

Annie:

Hey everyone. So lots of people have gotten puppies in the last few months during quarantine, which I’m super excited about. But the truth is, while the crazy world pandemic we’re living through might mean that you have more time to spend at home with your puppy, which by and large is a very good thing, it also means that there are some very real challenges that you may be facing that really might make things harder than they would be for a puppy owner getting a puppy in more normal times. You might not have the support system around you that you used to have. You might not have access to safe places that you can go with your puppy outside of your home. You’re probably dealing with financial stress. You might be having to move unexpectedly. You might get sick. But you know, all of this is to say that if you can get through having a puppy during quarantine, you know, it’s kind of like I tell my clients, if your puppy can make it here, he can make it anywhere. In New York City.

Same thing with this. If you can get you and your new puppy through this difficult period in the right ways, you’re really going to be setting yourself up for a life together that is going to be enjoyable...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

Lassie's Boy Sidekick: Meet Jon Provost, aka Timmy Jul 03, 2020

Show notes

Jon Provost was the boy sidekick to the 20th Century's most-loved dog: Lassie. In the late 1950s and early 1960s a third of American households tuned in each week to watch Lassie, a whip-smart Collie, help Timmy get out of countless pickles. Lassie came to define the "perfect" dog. In this episode Provost, who is now 70, talks about working with a dog star, and about what he learned from Lassie's rather progressive trainer/owner, the famous Hollywood dog trainer Rudd Weatherwax. He and Annie also discuss his early exposure to the notion of a "therapy" dog, and his more recent work to bring attention to rescue dogs, Army dogs, and more. Annie ends the episode by reflecting on how Lassie impacted our cultural notions about dogs, perhaps not for the better, and reads from Jean Donaldson's book Culture Clash, about the Disney-fication of dogs and how a desire to anthropomorphize "man's best friend" has led to some huge errors in the way people attempt to train and understand the dogs who live with us.

If you're enjoying School For The Dogs Podcast, please subscribe to it, rate it, and leave a review!

Jean Donaldson's Culture Clash: https://amzn.to/2KNwH2n

JonProvost.com

Timmy's In The Well: The Jon Provost Story https://amzn.to/2ZAVxbL

Get a free eBook: Three Secret Keys To Dog Training Success when you register for Annie's Free Master Class! http://anniegrossman.com/masterclass

You can find some old episodes of Lassie on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluWrXiVNks

Rudd Weatherwax's obituary: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-02-26-me-25026-story.html

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Partial Transcript:
Annie:

60 years ago, there was a TV show that was so popular, it's estimated it was watched in a third of American households each week. Its star, whose name was Baby, was a guy playing the role of a girl -- a nonhuman girl. That girl was, of course, Lassie.

[Whistling - Lassie theme]

Baby has long since left us. The show is only on in reruns. And today, most people have not heard of Lassie's famous trainer, Rudd Weatherwax, who was responsible for many of the 20th century's most famous dog actors, but last year, his best friend is still around and still hanging out with dogs like it's his job. Today, I have for you an interview with Jon Provost who played Timmy on the show Lassie for most of his childhood. He spoke to me about Weatherwax’s progressive and positive reinforcement based training methods, what it was like to grow up off camera with Lassie, and about his continued work with dogs. Fun fact, did you know there was actually never an episode where Timmy fell in a well, can you believe that?

Before we get started, I just wanted to suggest that you go check out my brand new one hour long master class. It's called “Three simple things every dog owner needs to know to teach a dog quickly and easily without, force, pain, a major time investment or fancy equipment.” It's a presentation where I talk about how I got into dog training, how it kind of revolutionized how I see the world. You'll learn to think about the way your dog learns, specifically wow to think about the way in which your dog is learning thanks to classical conditioning all the time...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

Don't Let Your Dog Cry It Out: On Training Dogs To Be Alone Jun 26, 2020

Show notes

In an ideal world, dogs would all be trained to be able to be alone. It would be a process of shaping a behavior, and helping your dog make good associations with being without you. But, in the real world, not everyone can take the time to acclimate a dog to alone time. Annie talks about the "cry it out" method and some of the tools that are used to punish the behaviors that can occur when a dog is stressed about being alone, and their potential fall out. She also gives a few strategies you can use when you really just have to leave your dog before you are sure he can handle it, and discusses what it means when we get rid of a behavior using extinction.

Support School For The Dogs by shopping in our online store!

Products mentioned in this episode. Treat n' Train - https://storeforthedogs.com/products/treat-train

Treat Separation Anxiety In Dogs by Malena DiMartini

Scholarship Fund mosaic: http://schoolforthedogs.com/mosaic

Master Class can be found at anniegrossman.com/masterclass

NYDogShare.com

Also listen to:

Episode 26 | Teach a foolproof DROP and COME using Classical Conditioning

Episode 59 | Separation Anxiety Expert Malena DeMartini on Helping Dogs Learn To Be Alone

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

I am in my neighbor's apartment. This has become my backup recording studio. And my neighbor is a wonderful man I have known my entire life. He has a lot of stuff. He has a lot of stuff. I don't think he would disagree with that statement. And right next to the desk where I've been recording in order to seek some quiet, because my apartment is not quiet very often with my little daughter, right, running around. Right next to the spot in his apartment, where I sit is a dead cockroach that's been dead on its back for, uh, the last few months and has remained unmoved. And I feel like I've been paying homage to this dead cockroach. Like we've been sharing space with him in his death, me still alive. You know, I don't think I ever saw him when he was alive, but he did live in my building. I thought about picking him up. But then I started to feel like he was some kind of symbol. Not as cute as like a rabbit's foot, but actually kind of less gross. And, you know, people have taxidermied animals that they keep around. Right now, I'm just coexisting with a dead cockroach.
[Intro and music]

Annie:

So I've been getting a lot of questions relating to separation, which I guess could be sort of seen as predictable seeing that there's been a period of people being home a lot with their dogs. And now perhaps a period of us being less at home with our dogs. And a lot of people who have gotten dogs in the interim period, this like COVID 19 puppy and adoption boom that we seem to have seen. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about how I think about separation and the various options of how you can deal with it.
And you know, I should say that separation is such a frustrating issue. And if you've listened to this podcast before you might've heard the episode I did with Malena Dimartini, who is probably the separation anxiety dog training expert out there...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

Cues & Commands: How We Communicate To Dogs What We Want From Them & Vice Versa Jun 19, 2020

Show notes

Before Annie became a dog trainer, she assumed all dogs were trained using "commands" and cues were for... pool games and stage actors. In this episode, she talks about the difference between cues and commands, describes the process of adding a cue, noticing cues, changing cues, and more.

Enjoy School For The Dogs Podcast? Please leave a 5-star rating on iTunes and a review!

Notes:

Find Annie's new MasterClass at http://anniegrossman.com/masterclass

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court https://amzn.to/2Yectpg

Episode 19: How To Train A Dog To Sit From Scratch

https://www.schoolforthedogs.com/podcasts/episode-19-how-to-train-a-dog-to-sit-from-scratch/

Episode 40: Teaching A Stellar Down With A Verbal Or Visual Cue

https://www.schoolforthedogs.com/podcasts/13927/

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

Mark Twain, satirist of the 19th century, one of my favorite writers, wrote the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. And it’s a story about–it’s a time travel story about a guy who gets bonked on the head and wakes up and thinks at first that he’s in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but actually he’s gone back in time from the 1800s to King Arthur’s court and he’s in Camelot. He gets himself into trouble there, he’s going to be burned at the stake. And then he realizes that he had learned in school that in the year 528, the year that he’s found himself in, there was a solar eclipse. So he predicts this natural event, and he makes everyone believe that he caused it.

I think about this book sometimes when I’m thinking about the process of adding a cue to a behavior that we want our dogs to know. Now, before I first went to dog trainer school, I referred to commands. You gave your dog a command and the dog followed the command or not. It would have never occurred to me to call it anything other than a command. Instead, I was encouraged to think about how we can cue a dog to do the thing we want. Now, at first I understood the reason as, like we don’t want to be coercing dogs and it is coercive if you’re commanding something, because it’s like, you’re saying do this, or else. There’s an implied or else. And you know, that made sense to me, but I also thought that, you know, it would be possible to command and then reward. So maybe it was just too narrow a reading of the word command.

But then I started to understand that the notion that we are commanding a dog to do something really gives us way too much credit. We are sometimes cueing a dog to do something perhaps on purpose, but perhaps not on purpose. And it would be funny to call that a command. Dogs do things all the time because of things that we do that we might not have actually wanted our dog to do. You wouldn’t call that command, but it might be some kind of cue to your dog, if your dog is perceiving it. What’s more, there are lots of cues that your dog is perceiving that have nothing to do with you. They are learning cues from the environment, all around them, from each other, from things we might not even be perceiving.

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

A Pet Food Killed My Dog: Susan Thixton & The Truth About Pet Food Jun 12, 2020

Show notes

Thirty years ago, a vet told Susan Thixton that dog food had given her dog bone cancer, and the dog had two weeks to live. "That day changed my life," she said. She dove into researching pet food, and found an industry doing its best to keep its practices opaque to pet owners. Too often, she discovered, we are literally feeding our dogs garbage. In the decades since, Susan has become a full time blogger on the subject and a consumer advocate, lobbying to try to improve the quality of the food we feed our pets. She and Annie discuss the difference the precise definitions of terms like "food" and "feed," "with" and "meal," and Susan reveals what she feels is the single most important thing to look for when selecting a pet food. This episode may forever change how you think about dog food.

http://anniegrossman.com/masterclass

Notes:

This conversation was recorded as a webinar, a replay of which can be found here.
TruthAboutPetFood.com: What is feed grade and human grade pet food? Learn the differences.

TruthAboutPetFood.com: Pet food ingredients differ from human food ingredients.

TruthAboutPetFood.com: Learn how to add some real food to your pet’s diet.

TruthAboutPetFood.com: 2020 List Of Preferred Foods

Association For Truth In Pet Food

Dr. Becker's Real Food For Healthy Dogs & Cats

PlanetPaws.ca's food recipes

Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua In The Coal Mine by Marion Nestle

Dr. Judy Morgan's naturally healthy Pets Recipes

EvermorePetFood.com

BalanceIt.com

---
Partial Transcript:

Annie:

Hello, Sue, why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself.
Susan Thixton:
I'm Susan Thixton. I run the website TruthAboutPetFood.com, and run a consumer stakeholder organization association for truth in pet food, providing food consumers with a voice at pet food regulatory meetings, and with FDA, when they choose to listen to us. It's strictly their ballgame and sometimes they listen to us and sometimes they don't.

Annie:
Now I first found you through your blog Truth About Pet Food. Did the associations start the blog or vice versa?

Susan:
Truth About Pet Food started first and I was going to AFCO meetings and wanted to ask them for an advisory position to where, you know, I could give them consumer opinion more than just being in the audience. And they denied me year after year. And when a president, former president, finally went off the board of directors, he told me that the trick is we didn't want a blogger to be an advisor to AFCO.
Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

On Racism, Reinforcement, Leashes & Poop Bags Jun 05, 2020

Show notes

Last week in New York City a white woman called the cops on a black man, saying he was threatening her life. Really, he just wanted her to obey Central Park's leash laws. In this episode, Annie attempts to dissect the altercation from a dog trainer's point of view, talking about everything from how we should use leashes, to how the man used an interesting combination of treats and negative reinforcement to get the woman to leash the dog. Through the lens of dog behavior and training, we can also spot how fear, caused by ignorance or wrong associations or both, can lead to awful actions. Annie also talks about the animal-training concepts of "trigger stacking," her own "learned helplessness" when it comes to affecting change by voting, and her ongoing efforts to take a stance, one poop bag at a time.

Get our free house training guide:

Http://SchoolForTheDogs.com/house

Notes: The Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper video

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/29/amy-cooper-white-woman/

Mendota Leashes https://storeforthedogs.com/products/braided-leash

Found My Animal leashes https://storeforthedogs.com/collections/found-my-animal/products/found-my-animal-leash-1 Coercion And Its Fallout by Murray Sidman https://behavior.org/product/coercion-and-its-fallout-2/ Donald Trump Poop Bags https://storeforthedogs.com/products/copy-of-irreverent-poopbags-assorted-selection --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hey everyone. I recorded this episode over a week ago, before riots broke out all around the country. The episode is about the incident that happened just before George Floyd was killed in another part of the country in New York City. It felt to me, you know, I'm in New York, it felt like a local incident took place more or less than in School for the Dog's backyard. And I didn't expect it to go viral, but it did because it's about race and racism and white privilege. And then George Floyd's killing suddenly made this New York City incident seem all the more sinister and terrible. This isn't a podcast about race. But the reason I felt like I wanted to say something about the New York incident is because in the middle of these two people, one of whom was black, one of whom was white, there was literally a dog and no one else is talking that much about the dog, which makes sense. There's a lot to unpack here that has nothing to do with the dog, but this is a podcast about dogs and about dog training. And so I felt I wanted to talk about the dog and to do so without so much touching on the much larger issues going on because I'm not a political commentator or an activist. I am a white woman who owns a small business. I think Black Lives Matter and I'm depressed and frightened to be living in a world where we even need to point out that black lives matter. All weekend, I lay in bed, holding my daughter and listening to helicopters and sirens overhead. And I just felt helpless. And if you've listened to this podcast before you obviously know that I like to try and spot the dog training lessons in the world we live in because so much of our lives is about changing our own behavior or trying to change other people's behavior.

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

The Greatest Animal Trainer On Earth: Ken Ramirez May 22, 2020

Show notes

When Ken Ramirez is not training elephants to avoid poachers, teaching dogs to count, coaxing polar bears out of suburban garbage cans or getting butterflies to fly on cue, he is mentoring and educating dog trainers. Ken is the Executive Vice President and public face of Karen Pryor Clicker Training, which operates the Karen Pryor Academy, among other things. In this episode, he and Annie discussed his new book of essays, how he almost got The Dog Whisperer's time slot, the existence of free will, sleep training a baby and more.

Get our guide to making walks more fun:

Http://SchoolForTheDogs.com/funwalks
Notes:
The Eye Of The Trainer: Animal Training, Transformation and Trust, by Ken Ramirez - On My Mind: Reflections on Animal Behavior and Learning, by Karen Pryor - Ken Ramirez on Hannah Brannigan's Drinking From The Toilet Podcast - Ken Ramirez on Ryan Cartlidge's Animal Training Academy Podcast - KenRamirezTraining.com - Ken's Letters - Training Lessons From Pokemon Go - Talk To The Animals clip - Find the ukulele-duo Toast Garden on Youtube! If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review!
---

Partial Transcript:

*Intro*
Annie:
So if you are a professional animal trainer or aspiring to be a professional animal trainer, I'm guessing that you've probably heard of my guest today. If you're not, you probably haven't. Whether you're in one of those categories or the other, I am really excited to get to share this conversation with you with this pretty remarkable man.
Now, I normally like to ask people how they first got into the field of animal training or dog training in particular, but I didn't go into that with my guests today only because there were so many things I wanted to talk to him about, and you can also get his backstory on a couple other great podcasts, including the Animal Training Academy Podcast with Ryan Cartlidge and Hannah Brannigans podcast, Drinking from the Toilet. The short version is he grew up on a ranch, began volunteering, working with a guide dog organization when he was still a teenager, and then kind of lucked into a job working with exotic animals, which then helped mold his choices of what to study in college. He then spent more than two decades working at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, where he eventually was the Executive Vice President of Animal Care. And well, I'm just gonna let him introduce himself and talk about what he's doing now.
Ken Ramirez:
My name is Ken Ramirez and I am the executive vice president and chief trading officer for Karen Pryor Clicker Training. And I have been training, gosh, for over 40 years now. Worked in the zoological field. I work as a consultant for zoos and aquariums. I work as a consultant for search and rescue dogs and law enforcement and guide dogs. And I do a lot of work in the conservation arena, so I have a lot of interests and I keep very busy.
Full transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe

The Most Important Behavior You'll Ever Train May 15, 2020

Show notes

There is one behavior we teach every dog we work with at School For The Dogs: Touch!

This is an easy-to-teach building block that you can use to build... whatever you want! In this episode, Annie outlines how to teach touch, and talks about this behavior's countless uses and variations.

Annie's Free Webinar on training touch - https://event.webinarjam.com/go/replay/78/k6v60c95ir6t6nf1

More on Chirag Patel's Bucket Game - https://www.facebook.com/thebucketgame

Ken Ramirez demonstrates different types of targeting. - https://theranch.clickertraining.com/live-episode-1/

Doodle Buddy and other apps you can use with your dog - https://anniegrossman.com/2013/12/training/3-apps-your-dog-can-use-to-make-art-35313/8246/

Support this podcast by shopping in our online store, storeforthedogs.com! http://storeforthedogs.com/

Products mentioned in this episode:

Clicker Sticks https://storeforthedogs.com/products/clicker-stick

Lamb Lung https://storeforthedogs.com/products/lamb-lung
---
Partial Transcript:
[Intro]
Annie:
Hey everyone. Annie here. Thank you so much for listening. If you're hearing this on Friday, May 15th, today is the last day that we are offering 30 minute free sessions at School for the Dogs. This is something that we started to do at the beginning of quarantine. We are bringing an end to this offer for the moment. So if you have not booked one yet, you should do so at schoolforthedogs.com and we can work on whatever you want to work on with your dog. Whether you want to talk about an ongoing issue you're having, or you just want some ideas of fun stuff you can do with your dog, or maybe you're thinking about getting a dog, whatever is going on. Our certified trainers would be psyched to talk to you, but again, today is the last day that you can get one of these sessions for free if you book before the end of the day today schoolforthedogs.com.
Today I wanted to talk about my favorite behavior to train and the behavior that I think is probably the most important behavior for anyone to train, especially if you're just starting out training a dog. I would even go so far as to say that this might be the only behavior you need to train. I'll explain a little bit more about that in a moment, but the behavior is a Touch, specifically teaching a dog to touch his nose to your fingers.
Now I first want to describe what this behavior is going to look like, what it's going to consist of, and then I'll talk about some variations and why I think it's such an essential building block behavior. Your first job is to decide which hand your dog is going to touch and which hand is going to hold the treats. Now you could certainly reward with play or lots of other things other than food.

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe