My teenage border collie Merlin and I were at a morning practice session at my agility club. We’d been working for a long time, and Merlin, getting bored, decided that he’d rather go hang out with the other dogs. He took off after the nearest dog and got in her way. “Come play with me!”…
These are a couple of myths about shelter/rescue dogs I hear all the time, and am pretty tired of hearing. Why are these two so prevalent? Maybe it’s because rescuing a dog from a shelter is a cool thing to do right now, and these myths help make it seem even more like an even…
“Argh!” groans the dog owner. “I don’t want to have to give Sparky a treat every single time he does something right. That seems really ineffective. He’s gonna get fat and I’m gonna go broke buying all these hot dogs.” This dog owner is absolutely right. It is ineffective to treat your dog every time…
Some people are just really good at dog training. They get results and seem like naturals. Does this mean that the rest of us mere mortals cannot hope to be as good as they are? Nope. Ask any one of these “naturals” how they got so good and they’ll probably tell you “with lots of…
