Dog Training

To Crate or Not to Crate

By Angelica Steinker, M.Ed., C.D.B.C, CAP2 designed by Kimberly "Kim" Archer, CPDT-KA, CTDI It has become a popular notion to crate dogs, especially during adolescence to encourage a reinforcement history with people rather than the environment. However, is keeping a dog crated for 23.5 hours a day appropriate? This article does not aim to exclusively answer any [...]

Play, Don’t Train

Play, Don't Train By Angelica Steinker, M.Ed., C.D.B.C, CAP2 Are your clients less motivated then you would like them to be? Stop telling them to train their dogs, and start [...]

Is Your Dog Bored?

Is Your Dog Bored? Enrich Your Dog’s Life! By Kimberly Archer, Dog Behavior Technician    Have you ever wondered what a day is like through your dog’s eyes? You may [...]

Health & Safety

Dog Agility Training

Homemade Agility

By Brenna Fender Before you could buy agility equipment online, and even before plans for making agility equipment became available, people practiced agility for fun in their backyards, and you can too! As long as [...]

A Quick Guide to Agility Organizations

By Brenna Fender The United States offers many agility sanctioning organizations, which means that American competitors have lots of options for different agility experiences. There are more similarities than differences between the organizations. Most are [...]

Courteous Canine Articles

Talking to Dogs

 by Pam Hogle Photo by Deni Elliott A newly published study finds that dogs pay attention to both the way we talk to them and to what we say. Alex Benjamin and Katie Slocombe’s ‘Who’s a good boy?!’ [...]

Animal Abuse Harms People Too

by Daniel Antolec If you are reading this blog then I may safely assume you are an animal lover, but sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes advocacy through direction action is required. I post this [...]

Thunderphobia in Dogs

by Daniel Antolec Thunderphobia is the fear of thunderstorms and it can be severe enough to make a dog’s life miserable.  It may be more common than you know. At least 20% of dogs suffer noise [...]

The Opposite of Force

by Eileen Anderson I think I’ve figured something out. I continue to see the concept of choice bandied about the positive reinforcement-based training world. It can be a code word for a setup that includes negative [...]

So Easy to Miscue …

by  Pam Hogle A few days ago, I heard a story on the radio about police dogs and their handlers. The reporter was talking to a retired police dog handler who now trains dogs and [...]

Clicker Training for Cats (1/6)

By Paula Garber and Francine Miller Just as with dogs, or any other animal, clicker training a cat is an ideal way to provide both physical and mental stimulation Photo (c) Can Stock Photo/Anobis [...]