Dog training

Welcome to my blog site. I have been helping people for years with training issues with their dogs, as well as training my own. I currently own three German Shorthair Pointers, one generic farm dog, and a special mix affectionally known as a "Dobador Retriever".

Years ago, we waited to train our dogs until they were 6 months of age. So much valuable time was lost, and studies have shown that it is much more beneficial to start at 10 weeks. Early dog training was primarily adversive or corrective, which was made popular by William Koehler. Koehler started in the military and then was recruited by Walt Disney to train dogs in their popular films. His methods were primarily use of the choke chain, and using corrections with the chain for unwanted behavior, and then praise with no correction when acceptable behaviors where attained. It was a functional form of training- given the lifestyle and how we as society viewed our dogs.

There was a quiet revolution occuring in the dog training world. Positive reinforcement was creeping into the canine world, and probably one of the most notables was Barbara Woodhouse, a british dog trainer, whose higher-pitched, almost annoying, Waallkkkeeeesss command caught our attention. Many dismissed this training as "parlor training" or "womans training" training with no substanance. Later, with clicker training, and noted behaviorists such as Dr. Ian Dunbar, positive training began to take shape and gain in popularity.

I have learned both methods, used both methods, and still do to this day. However, I will say with having a few hundred dogs and owners under my wing, I have to say that the positive reinforcement is the hands down the better route to travel. If you do need to do a correction, it has so much more impact if you have a solid foundation built on positive reinforcement. But, if the dog handler is really thinking through the desired action of the dog, and encourages the dog to perform the acceptable behavior, and rewards the behavior, the dog is more likely to repeat the behavior. If we get into trying to correct unwanted behavior, you still leave the dog guessing as to what the desired behavior is supposed to be, thereby, sometime prompting another unwanted behavior. This really adds to training time when you thing about the dog doing several attempts at a task, and failing, and being corrected, and failing.....would you want to work in those conditions?