The World Series Of Dog Training
As a RI dog trainer who travels the country training dogs and working with 20-30 families a week in their homes it is so important for folks to understand how a dog thinks. And when there is no authority figure present, the kind of chaos and bad behavior that can happen. Remember the bad behavior of your dog is not the problem it is just the outcome of a breakdown of leadership in your home.
LA dog trainers colleague Sean O’Shea from The Good Dog Training and Rehabilitation puts out such a great blog that I am going to start featuring it on
My Blog Page since the content and message is so powerful and important it needs to be shared by all, enjoy the read and feel free to also join his Facebook Page.
The World Series Of Dog Training
By Sean O’Shea
You don’t start swinging the bat the day of the World Series. You don’t throw your first Shot Put the day of the Olympics. You don’t sit down at the piano for the first time the day of your recital at Lincoln Center.
Of course all of these examples are silly, and no one in their right mind would actually contemplate them. BUT, as crazy as these examples are, this is exactly what I see so many dog owners do. And it’s one of the biggest causes of failure in their attempts to train/rehab their dog. It’s fascinating that something that we so intuitively understand in the human world (that being the necessity of using baby steps and constant preparation in order to achieve a bigger goal/accomplishment) regularly escapes us and frequently sabotages our attempts to train our dogs.
We somehow believe that the dog with the maniacal door reaction (or even worse, an aggression issue) will respond to our frantic attempts to keep him in “place” the one day someone shows up at our door, rather than practicing, preparing, and conditioning him to respond appropriately, to respect, listen and defer to you for the 3 weeks preceding the visit.
Or, we let our dog wander on the walk, smelling here and there, pulling us to and fro, teaching them ever so consistently that they need not respect or listen to us…and then our dog sees the little obnoxious dog from down the street and decides to not only bark, growl, froth, and spin, but also to share a bite on your leg for your trouble.
In the dog world, these are all World Series moments, and to think you can simply suit up and knock it out of the park on game day, without having spent the necessary practice, preparation, and skill building time, is folly.
If you’re looking to train or rehab any serious behavior problem, be sure that you practice, prepare, and condition both you and your dog with massive repetition and small, incremental challenges long BEFORE game day. Much of our success with severe behavior issues comes from utilizing this simple formula.
Remember, if you’re going to rock the stadium, you gotta work through T-ball, little league, high school, college ball, and then finally, if you’ve worked your butt off, you graduate to the big leagues. And if you approach your dog training with the same mind-set, you can accomplish something just as amazing!
Click here to visit Sean’s website.
The Good Dog Training and Rehabilitation
4867 Bellflower Ave.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
(818) 441-1837
Would you be able to advise me on our 10 month old rescue dog? She has been with us four months and is a very anxious dog. However, things have improved except for the fact that she is terrified (unfounded) by our 24 year old son who lives at home with us. He is a great animal lover and is upset that Bella does not like him. He tries his best with her but she backs away from him, barks (and won’t stop) when he comes through the door. This is our first dog and we are at a loss to know how to handle this. She is a very timid dog. Your advice with prong collar was a great help. Thanks. Barbara (UK)
thanks for writing, the issue is that your dog does not know that your son is a big animal lover, dogs don’t know what we do for a living, how much our houses or cars cost etc…they respond to energy, your son may be trying to hard which is a big trigger for dogs. I suggest your son start doing lots of obedience work with your dog, lots of structured walks, down, Place, recall feeding etc…lay of any affection since with nervous dogs that can make them more nervous…