Philosophy
The two main problems I see in the dog world are: 1) An unhealthy owner-dog relationship, and 2) Poor obedience. The relationship problem doesn’t mean that your dog doesn’t love you or that you’re not the “alpha”—it’s usually just that you and your dog are incapable of being on the same page. Unable to communicate. Unable to work together. No common purpose.
Most every dog understands the meaning of “sit” & “come” after a few months with people, and almost all of their owners badly misunderstand under what circumstances their dog is capable of performing these commands. There’s a big difference between the level of obedience it takes to “come” in a quiet room vs “come” while the dog is chasing the neighbors cat.
Obedience
What commands are you certain your dog knows? Under what circumstances do you have a 90% certainty that your dog will obey each of those commands, and how many times do you have to repeat the command? Most dogs don’t have a level of obedience that has much of any practical value. “Down” is incredibly useful if it can reliably immobilize your dog so that you can leave it, inside or out in public, and do the things you normally would had you not brought the dog along. But for most owners, “Down” only works when there’s nothing much going on inside the house, when the dog laying down isn’t actually of much help.
The training of individual commands—“Down”, “Sit”, “Place”, etc.—is usually pretty simple (though “Down” can be time consuming for some dogs). There’s a bunch of different ways to do this, and how these commands are initially trained does matter, but the big difference in obedience training methods lies in how they intend to take a dog from this rudimentary obedience to something useful.
Play
My method is to utilize what I see as a grossly overlooked aspect of the dog-human relationship—play. Treats are fine. There’s nothing wrong with training with treats, and I use them almost every time I train the initial behavior, but they have limited value. Compulsion is usually used in a way that is harmful to the dog-human relationship and is fraught with unintentional side affects, and in my opinion it is only appropriate under limited and almost always poorly understood situations. By using play, we tap into a dog’s natural energy, drive, and attention to us. Commands are given throughout, and playing with you is the reward. I have structured the play into games (play with rules) that require the dog to obey commands at increasingly higher levels of drive and higher levels of distraction. These levels correlate to real-world drives and distractions, meaning we will be training your dog in what I believe to be the most effective manner by playing games with it.
We increase the dog’s level of obedience through games, and we then apply appropriate corrections only at the level of obedience that they have already proven through the obedience games. This way, the dog is constantly challenged to follow obedience commands in difficult situations, yet the entire process is fun for both you and the dog. This is how we get your dog from Downing in the kitchen for a treat to Downing while you go get a drink at the bar or run off to cheer your kid on at the little league game.
Relationship
By nature, I’ve got a pretty good sense of dogs—what they’re focused on, what motivates them, what bothers them, etc. It’s not that I “speak dog”, just that I seem to get most of them enough that communicating and building a relationship with them usually goes pretty smoothly. But with people, it’s a different story. I like people, just like you like dogs, but I miss a lot of social cues, can’t ever get a grasp on why someone has this or that emotion, and if you talk to me long enough there’s bound to be some awkward silences. We’re speaking the same language, but we’re not understanding each other. With only the best intentions, I regularly misinterpret why people do what they do and say what they say, and this makes for relationships where we’re both communicating on different wavelengths (my poor wife!). And remember, we’re the same species, speaking the same language.
I see so many dog-owner relationships suffer this same kind of problem. Dog loves person and person loves dog, but there’s more misunderstanding than understanding, and since both are on different wavelengths, there’s just no way the two can effectively work together. For most, if the owner was taking the dog for a walk and midway through dropped the leash, turned around and walked the other way, the dog either wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t care, or would just run off. This isn’t an obedience problem, it’s a relationship problem. This would be very out-of-the-ordinary behavior for the owner, which a dog in a healthy relationship would be attentive to. We would want to see the dog look to you for cues as to why you’re acting peculiarly, to follow you because something’s obviously off, and because a dog’s there to help out when something’s off.
Result
Obedience Games offer a means to begin communicating with your dog that does wonders for your bond. During the Obedience Games, the dog looks to you for guidance, not as a stepping stone to a reward, but as the pleasurable thing itself. For example, it is not the tug toy that the dog wants, but playing tug with you. It is the engagement with you during play that the dog is taking great pleasure in. The dog must be attentive and obedient to you for the play to continue, and that attention and obedience itself becomes an enjoyable thing. You neither compel nor bribe the dog for its focus. The dog will be accustomed and comfortable taking cues from you, which you then carry on to real-world situations. The Obedience Games give you a shared language and the structure for your relationship, where the dog looks to you for guidance, that you can easily enforce outside of the games.
The two main problems I see in the dog world are: 1) An unhealthy owner-dog relationship, and 2) Poor obedience. The relationship problem doesn’t mean that your dog doesn’t love you or that you’re not the “alpha”—it’s usually just that you and your dog are incapable of being on the same page. Unable to communicate. Unable to work together. No common purpose.
Most every dog understands the meaning of “sit” & “come” after a few months with people, and almost all of their owners badly misunderstand under what circumstances their dog is capable of performing these commands. There’s a big difference between the level of obedience it takes to “come” in a quiet room vs “come” while the dog is chasing the neighbors cat.
Obedience
What commands are you certain your dog knows? Under what circumstances do you have a 90% certainty that your dog will obey each of those commands, and how many times do you have to repeat the command? Most dogs don’t have a level of obedience that has much of any practical value. “Down” is incredibly useful if it can reliably immobilize your dog so that you can leave it, inside or out in public, and do the things you normally would had you not brought the dog along. But for most owners, “Down” only works when there’s nothing much going on inside the house, when the dog laying down isn’t actually of much help.
The training of individual commands—“Down”, “Sit”, “Place”, etc.—is usually pretty simple (though “Down” can be time consuming for some dogs). There’s a bunch of different ways to do this, and how these commands are initially trained does matter, but the big difference in obedience training methods lies in how they intend to take a dog from this rudimentary obedience to something useful.
Play
My method is to utilize what I see as a grossly overlooked aspect of the dog-human relationship—play. Treats are fine. There’s nothing wrong with training with treats, and I use them almost every time I train the initial behavior, but they have limited value. Compulsion is usually used in a way that is harmful to the dog-human relationship and is fraught with unintentional side affects, and in my opinion it is only appropriate under limited and almost always poorly understood situations. By using play, we tap into a dog’s natural energy, drive, and attention to us. Commands are given throughout, and playing with you is the reward. I have structured the play into games (play with rules) that require the dog to obey commands at increasingly higher levels of drive and higher levels of distraction. These levels correlate to real-world drives and distractions, meaning we will be training your dog in what I believe to be the most effective manner by playing games with it.
We increase the dog’s level of obedience through games, and we then apply appropriate corrections only at the level of obedience that they have already proven through the obedience games. This way, the dog is constantly challenged to follow obedience commands in difficult situations, yet the entire process is fun for both you and the dog. This is how we get your dog from Downing in the kitchen for a treat to Downing while you go get a drink at the bar or run off to cheer your kid on at the little league game.
Relationship
By nature, I’ve got a pretty good sense of dogs—what they’re focused on, what motivates them, what bothers them, etc. It’s not that I “speak dog”, just that I seem to get most of them enough that communicating and building a relationship with them usually goes pretty smoothly. But with people, it’s a different story. I like people, just like you like dogs, but I miss a lot of social cues, can’t ever get a grasp on why someone has this or that emotion, and if you talk to me long enough there’s bound to be some awkward silences. We’re speaking the same language, but we’re not understanding each other. With only the best intentions, I regularly misinterpret why people do what they do and say what they say, and this makes for relationships where we’re both communicating on different wavelengths (my poor wife!). And remember, we’re the same species, speaking the same language.
I see so many dog-owner relationships suffer this same kind of problem. Dog loves person and person loves dog, but there’s more misunderstanding than understanding, and since both are on different wavelengths, there’s just no way the two can effectively work together. For most, if the owner was taking the dog for a walk and midway through dropped the leash, turned around and walked the other way, the dog either wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t care, or would just run off. This isn’t an obedience problem, it’s a relationship problem. This would be very out-of-the-ordinary behavior for the owner, which a dog in a healthy relationship would be attentive to. We would want to see the dog look to you for cues as to why you’re acting peculiarly, to follow you because something’s obviously off, and because a dog’s there to help out when something’s off.
Result
Obedience Games offer a means to begin communicating with your dog that does wonders for your bond. During the Obedience Games, the dog looks to you for guidance, not as a stepping stone to a reward, but as the pleasurable thing itself. For example, it is not the tug toy that the dog wants, but playing tug with you. It is the engagement with you during play that the dog is taking great pleasure in. The dog must be attentive and obedient to you for the play to continue, and that attention and obedience itself becomes an enjoyable thing. You neither compel nor bribe the dog for its focus. The dog will be accustomed and comfortable taking cues from you, which you then carry on to real-world situations. The Obedience Games give you a shared language and the structure for your relationship, where the dog looks to you for guidance, that you can easily enforce outside of the games.
