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The best in health, wellness, and positive training from America’s leading dog experts

House Rules & Good Manners

Training Your Dog to Be Polite

she probably shouldn't be in public until she's had some remedial "downtown hound" lessons.üTeach your dog "leave it

Peacekeeping Among Cats and Dogs

It's fairly common for dogs to be placed for adoption with a caveat that there should be no cats

Training Tiny Dogs

however.üMany small dogs reflexively resist being picked up
Training a dog to behave when guests visits makes holidays a lot easier.

Training a Dog to Behave When Guests Visit

As much as we worry if we’re doing the best for our dogs, any veterinarian can tell you that many of the problems they see are accidents, predictable and completely preventable., Around any holiday, that’s even more true, when people get busy, routines get changed and visitors come to call. All the changes put both people and dogs at higher risk of accident or illness.

Training Your Dog Not to Jump Up

There’s a common misconception that dogs jump on people to establish dominance. Balderdash! Dogs jump on people because there’s something about jumping that is reinforcing for the dog - usually the human attention that results from the jumping. If you want your dog to stop jumping on people, you have to be sure he doesn’t get reinforced for it. Here are five things to do when your dog jumps on people. Of course you need to practice polite greetings in the absence of the exciting stimulus of guests and strangers by reinforcing your dog’s appropriate greeting with you and other family members. Be sure to take advantage of the presence of guests and strangers to reinforce your dog’s polite greeting behaviors while you’re managing with leashes and tethers.

How to Stop Your Dog From Chewing All of Your Shoes

For almost any challenging dog event there are at least five relatively easy things you can do to defuse the crisis and reduce the likelihood of a return engagement of the unwanted behavior. Action Plan" is a new column that will offer five simple solutions for one common undesirable dog behavior. Feel free to suggest your favorites!"

Nocturnal Dogs

and matching leash all get softer with time and laundering. I like the extra large D-ring for snapping the leash onto.

Teaching Your Dog to “Leave It” On Cue

mark the desired behavior with the click of a clicker (or the word "Yes!") and feed him a different treat.üPractice "Leave it!" with everything your dog likes in real life: food

Solutions for a Dog Who Digs the Yard

The perfect storm, canine edition: Combine one dog who is accustomed to and prefers spending time outdoors; a spate of hot, dry weather; a lush, productive garden full of herbs and tomato plants growing in raised boxes full of expensive, loamy soil and moistened three times daily by an automatic drip system. What do you get? Holes dug in the garden and an irate husband! Our new dog, Otto, nearly made himself quite unwelcome on his second day in our home. Every time I turned around, I'd find him digging in any place we'd recently watered, including the lawn, a flowerbed in front of the house, underneath a gorgeous hydrangea bush that's already hard-pressed to survive our hot summers, and, most seriously, the vegetable beds in back. Can't you train this dog not to dig?" my husband implored. But this wasn't a training issue; I've been trained enough by Pat Miller and our other contributing trainer/writers to recognize a management situation when I see it!"

Train Your Dog to Greet People

Recently, I switched the group class format at my Peaceable Paws Training Center to Levels." Instead of a progressive curriculum with new exercises introduced each week

Proper Dog-to-Dog Introductions in the Home

You're contemplating the addition of another canine family member to your pack. You've thought it through and are convinced that it's the right time. However, if you already have dogs in your home, you'll need to prepare for the potentially stressful process known as new dog introduction." There are a number of factors to keep in mind that can increase the likelihood of a positive outcome when introducing a new dog into your home. A peaceful first introduction sets the stage for long term relationships. The more heavily you can weigh the odds in your favor for that first encounter

Dogs and Puppies Chew For a Number of Reasons, Learn to Properly Channel This...

between three and six months of age. While the baby teeth are shedding and the adult teeth are erupting

Latest Blog

How to Improve Your Dog’s Leash Manners

I occasionally teach a “leash manners” class at my friend’s dog-training center. In the first class, their hands are all over the place, and cues are, “NO! NO! STOP it!” I almost always see a tiny improvement in week two.