What is the power of "no"? It is the most important yet often overlooked or misunderstood aspect of anxiety rehab. It is the difference between an anxious dog who will respect - and hence trust - you or merely looking at you as a "buddy". The power of "no" is what makes an anxious dog think before he acts. It is what will make him put you in the centre of his decision making process even when he is surrounded by threatening triggers. An anxious dog is not anxious because he is in lack of love. No, he has had lots of love. Sleeping in bed, getting tummy rubs, lots of soft human talks, lots o ..read more

We hear this a lot, "you need to have confident energy or your dog will pick up on it and that's why they are reacting!" This common saying shifts the blame on the "energy" of the owners. Since energy is so abstract, many owners then become very discouraged and just resign to "it's because of the way l am that my dog acts like this. But since l can't change it, l will just have to live with it." Their lack of confidence - or "softness" as some like to call it - is not the reason why their dogs keep reacting. But they don't know that. They think they need to appear confident in front of thei ..read more

Most dogs are always ignoring their commands, pulling all over the place, sniffing obsessively, always finding everything in public more interesting than their humans, invading other people/dogs space uninvited, barking incessantly over nothing, and many are displaying all sorts of anxieties and cannot be left alone without constantly demanding attention. You are working hard to have a dog who is better behaved than any of those dogs. You are therefore the exception, not the norm. You are not the 99%, you are the top 1%. It is normal that others won’t understand you and it is to be expected th ..read more

Voluntary eye contact is not something we actively ask with a verbal command; it is something a dog offers us voluntarily on his/her own. How do we nurture it? We can start by looking at eye contact as a way our dog is trying to communicate with us. For example, when we are taking our dog out on our first walk of the day, we can have the dog in a sit next to us in front of an opened door quietly, and only start moving through the door after the dog has offered us eye contact. I know a lot of people will but we don’t reward the dog with treats when the dog offers us eye contact at the door. Why ..read more

During holiday seasons, when you have friends and family bringing their dogs over, the following system is what l recommend and use myself. All the dogs that come to my home need to be crate trained. All the dogs are going to place or crate when the humans are doing other things in the house (eg having dinner). I do not allow dogs that have never met to just sniff and play with each other. They don’t “meet and greet” in the house by going crazy once they see each other. We can walk them side by side outside, or they can just place or crate (down in the crate) around each other. Visitors are to ..read more

What do I recommend when bringing a newborn baby home to a dog with a bite history? I have never seen smelling the baby’s blanket or clothes do anything to make a reactive/aggressive dog like a baby when they actually meet. I guess may be it’s the same reasoning to some people as giving the dog the owner’s T-shirt to help with separation anxiety, which again, is not something l have seen work (but l have read that some dogs ingested the t-shirt while alone and needed to be rushed to the vet due to impaction). Training is what will transform the dog’s decision making process, outlook on this wo ..read more

We don’t encourage any on-leash greeting (i.e., allowing a dog to “say hi” to other dogs or people while leashed). Here is why. Dog Socialization is not about saying hi to other random dogs and strangers while on leash. Doing so can be very counter productive. We want to teach our dogs to be engaged, confident, and calm when we encounter other dogs and strangers in public. We want to have a well behaved dog who is a pleasure to go out with and one which will not cause other people or dogs inconvenience in public. That is our objective of socialization. I know lots of people have been told that ..read more

The walk is a commitment. It is not something we only pay attention to once in a while; it is something we focus on once we start walking and it is something we commit to every step of the way. Once you are committed to being really in tune to where your dog is at, you dog will become very in tune to where you are as well. This commitment to being very precise with every little step will lead to a very intimate relationship whereas your dog will prioritize you even around heavy distractions, and always strive to be mindful, respectful, and trusting around you — not only when you are walking yo ..read more

You know, l get messages about how ecollar trainings are cruel and lectures on how positive reinforcement can teach everything, all the time. You won’t see them on my Facebook comment because l will just delete them all. There was a time when these messages would depress me. It made me feel very bad that we were doing so much to help all these dogs and working so hard to achieve all these transformations yet we were constantly being judged very unfairly and being attacked in a very harsh manner by people who clearly did not know how to do what we do and could not achieve what we could. Then on ..read more

“Why don’t we keep using treats on the walk?” “Why don’t we allow the dog to keep sniffing on the walk?” These are very common questions that l would like to take a moment to address here. Dogs have a lot of “drives” that motivate them to make the decisions they do. There are things that are very important to them that do not really work the same way with humans. These drives will dictate their behaviours. These drives are genetic. If we only try to communicate with them superficially (eg bribe them to follow us with a treat when they want to lunge at a dog), we are failing them. We are making ..read more