Here is a letter I received from another professional dog trainer reads: Hi Adam, I’m Jim Haines. My partner Brenda and I graduated from Tom’s [Tom Rose's School For Professional Dog Trainers, in St. Louis, Missouri] 20 week program, four years ago. We have trained just over 1000 dogs/owners (the vast majority being in-kennel training & privates one-on-one). I love your internet chat room and plan to throw my hat in the ring. We deal with the same pinch collar issues from the well meaning Read more [...]

I never yell at my dog. Never. Well, okay. There’s one exception. And that exception is if: I’m already working with the dog at such a far distance that he can’t audibly hear me. And usually this is the case only if I’m teaching the dog to respond to hand signals. Why don’t I ever raise my voice if I’m working with my dog, otherwise? Because the only thing that raising your voice achieves is to communicate to your dog that you really DO NOT have control. And since I train with a modified working Read more [...]

Hand Signals. Hand Signals I teach by linking the hand signals with the verbal commands I have already taught. So what you do is, give the new command and THEN the old command, and then go and enforce the behavior. For instance, if I wanted to teach the dog to sit with the hand signal, I’d start by reaching out to my right (the new command) then say sit… and then with my other hand pop up on the leash. I usually do these for sit, down, and come. Heel usually isn’t necessary. Advanced Handling Read more [...]

Onto the Level II. I teach the recall predominately with the long line. I get a 20 foot or a 30 foot long line… you can get one from a horse and tack store… and “set the dog up” so that the dog gets distracted and runs off from you… and as he gets to the end, call his name and give him a pop on the line. Move your body backwards so that your body language is encouraging the dog to come in to you. And praise him as he comes towards you. If he decides to run off in the opposite direction, Read more [...]

I was rumaging through the outer regions of my hard drive last week when I came upon a letter I’d written to a dog trainer on the East Coast. He’d asked me how I run my private lessons for my clients at South Bay K-9 Academy. (I’m no longer accepting new clients). So, I dictated a 20 minute spiel to my secretary, and then had her type up a transcript of my ramblings and send it off in the mail… but not before saving it to my hard drive. And now, two years later, I thought sharing this letter Read more [...]

I bet you’d like to know what it is, eh? I’ll give you a hint: Famous physicist Albert Einstein knew it… although he may not have realized he was talking about dog training at the time. Omaha Investment legend Warren Buffett (the second richest man in America, behind Bill Gates) knows it, too. Even though Buffett doesn’t even own a dog. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the POWER OF COMPOUNDING!!! “But what the heck does ‘compounding’ have to do with dog training???” you ask. The Read more [...]

As a professional dog trainer, most of what I do is really training the dog owner, in contrast to simply training the dog. And what really gets my goat (okay, okay… this is a dog training newsletter!)… is that time and again, dog owners refuse to fess up to the fact that 98% of their dog’s bad behavior is a DIRECT result of what THEY do!!! Let me give you an example, and hopefully you’ll start viewing your relationship with your dog in a different context. Bad clients (vs. good clients!) call Read more [...]

The frustrating thing about being in the dog training business is coming to the realization that 90% of your time is spent training people, rather than dogs. To really deliver the results, a professional dog trainer must train the owner how to train their dog. Rather than just going in and training the dog. Because dog training is: 1) A process of establishing and promoting a proper relationship between the owner and the dog… and . . . 2) Developing a way of communicating so that commands Read more [...]

There are two common mistakes the amateur dog trainer makes when someone tells him to go out and buy a pinch collar. The first mistake the amateur makes is to incorrectly size the collar. The size of the collar is not determined by the number of prongs in the collar, but rather the size of the prongs themselves. Usually, these collars come in three sizes; small, medium and large. I can put together a collar with 100 small prongs in it, and it will still be a small collar. The fitting Read more [...]

A Comparison Of The Success Mindset vs. The Non-Success Mindset When Fixing Chewing Problems! Let’s assume that both the Successful dog trainer and the Non-Successful dog trainer start out owning two exactly identical three-year-old dogs. And let’s pretend that these dogs are a perfect genetic match, and will do the exact same behavior for each owner (initially). This way, we can see how it is actually the Success Mindset that ends up with a well trained dog that will no longer have a chewing Read more [...]