I was struck yesterday by an extraordinary ordinary moment while bringing in the groceries. A man I had never seen before was walking his 5-month old or so, extremely adorable Labrador Retriever down the street towards my house. As he approached, a couple things stood out. One, his dog had a very clean and tagged brightly colored flat buckle collar around its neck. Two, he was walking on a black Easy Walk anti-pull harness. Nothing too unusual here, but very pleasantly surprising. As the man approached closer with his pup, I notice one other thing. He had a green treat pouch around his waist. I couldn’t be any prouder of this man if he had been a client of my own. “Cute puppy!” I shouted to him as he walked by the porch. As I went inside and bent down to start putting the groceries away, I heard a very … Read More
Positive Interruptor… or Just Good Spin?
When I first learned about clicker-training, I must say that I had to question if clicker and positive trainers were agreeing with some of the same concepts as traditional and balanced trainers, just using more “politically correct” verbiage to make the point. Concepts like Direction vs. Discipline, No Reward Marker vs. Correction and Treat Placement vs. Luring left me wondering why we bothered to split so many terminological hairs. Having a career in marketing and sales, of course I am one to recognize and relish in some impressive spin when I hear it. Before I’m quickly run out of the positive dog training community, please let me attempt to explain myself… Having learned of – and unfortunately utilized – corrective methods in the past, it was going to take some solid proof before someone convinced me that you do not need positive punishment, or adding an aversive like a collar … Read More