Vlogcast: How to Help Your Dog LOVE Nail Cutting or Dremeling

If you read the title of this post and are wondering what a vlogcast is, it’s a blog post with a video of a podcast episode. And it's all about cutting your dog's nails at home. Over the years, there have been thousands of questions [...]

2021-09-02T21:55:05-04:00September 2nd, 2021|8 Comments

Forget It to Get It … Advanced IYC Cookie Jar Game

Learn a game to grow ItsYerChoice in daily life. It's especially useful if you find your dog staring at your pocket or the toy in your hand, or any "cookie" that you may have out. It will help make you aware of your responses to your dogs responses.

2021-05-23T02:01:41-04:00February 20th, 2020|15 Comments

Taking Back the Keys to the Cookie Jar!

We all love our dogs, therefore it is difficult not to indulge them occasionally. However, I have often said, "dogs are far better at shaping people, than people are at shaping dogs!" Learn a game to to change your dog's unwanted behaviour around the house, and replace frustration with fun! This game is going to make you aware of your responses, and how you can use what your dog finds reinforcing for the benefit of both of you.

2020-02-13T18:33:33-04:00February 13th, 2020|25 Comments

Planning for a Successful Shaping Session with Your Dog

We previously looked at creating a positive experience for our dogs when visiting the vet. This includes shaping our dogs to cooperate in their own care.  Over the years on my blog, I've written a lot about the benefits of shaping. I've even included a [...]

2020-03-08T00:45:56-04:00September 12th, 2019|4 Comments

The Secret Sauce For Enthusiasm … Balance Breaks!

Fun is an essential ingredient to training success for you and your dog, and the secret sauce to maintaining enthusiasm and engagement in a training session is to take a break. We call these "balance breaks" and also use "reset cookies". It might seem counter-intuitive [...]

2021-01-13T00:12:01-04:00January 17th, 2019|19 Comments

Positive Dog Training and the Difference in Shaping

Stoni & Shelby circa mid 1990's Last week we looked at luring vs shaping, so it's only fair that this week we are looking at shaping vs shaping. Recently in one of our Inner Circle coaching calls, we were discussing shaping, successive approximations, [...]

2020-02-12T20:43:12-04:00November 22nd, 2018|54 Comments

Your Dog Recovering From Severe Trauma . . . Is There A Baseline?

As many of you will know my then 8 year old Border Collie "Encore" suffered a major traumatic event 3 months ago when she collapsed seizing one morning which could not be stopped. With good medical care and the outpouring of prayers from this dog [...]

2020-01-11T21:11:59-04:00March 21st, 2013|96 Comments

Non Reward Markers: Reducing the Use

It seems everyone has a slightly different slant on their application of Non Reward Markers (NRMs) in training. Here is a little more on my approach. First of all, I never use them in training during a value building session (shaping). Actually, I rarely use [...]

2018-03-02T06:11:40-04:00February 9th, 2011|37 Comments
Go to Top