By Sean O’Shea One of the best ways to create an anxious, hyped-up, destructive, barking, whining, howling, crate-breaking, separation anxiety filled dog, is to share an effusive goodbye. Even when you leave without fanfare, it’s already hard on your dog. They’re likely already somewhat worried and concerned…worked up emotionally. So the last thing you want to do is make something that’s already difficult for your dog…a thousand times worse. The tendency for us is to want to connect and communicate to our dogs. We want them to know we love them. That we’re coming back. That we’re sorry. That ..read more

By Sean O’Shea Therapy. It’s a messy, uncomfortable, and often painful process. We all know going in that there’s a good chance of tears, overwhelm, panic, uncertainty. A therapists gig is to help you dig down into the muck of your experiences, trauma, and pain, examine it all, process it all, feel it all, and then, by giving you new tools and support, hopefully help you move on in the most healthy fashion possible. Lots of folks avoid therapy because it’s hard and often painful. It’s much easier to distract ourselves with all manner of “stuff”, and hope it will all be okay. But if you’re wil ..read more

By Sean O’Shea If you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the current friction in the dog training world, let me ruin that for you. There’s an approach that goes by various names. It might be called pure positive, force free, or rewards based. The concept is simple: for dogs, life and learning should always be 100% fun, comfortable, and enjoyable. You reward the behavior you like, and ignore the behavior you dislike. No tools or approaches that might impinge on 100% fun, comfortable, and enjoyable should ever be used. Anything that makes the dog uncomfortable is labeled inhumane. It’s purp ..read more

By Sean O’Shea What most folks don’t get, is that everything with your dog is connected. Every allowance or permissive moment, opens the door for another, seemingly unrelated behavior. They don’t realize that over-indulging your dog with love, freedom, and tons of unearned affection, creates perceptions about you that can lead to other issues. That everything you do or don’t do is giving your dog information about who you are and how he should respond to you. That you’re constantly dropping clues to your dog about what opportunities are available, as well as creating openings for instability ..read more

By Sean O’Shea Relationships are real things. You and your dog have one. It might be healthy, balanced, and awesome, or it might be toxic, disrespectful, and disheartening. Or maybe it’s somewhere in-between. Whatever it is, it’s been built by your interactions. What you’ve allowed. What you haven’t allowed. What you’ve asked for. What you’ve reinforced. Who you’ve been and how you’ve behaved. Everything you’ve done has been information your dog has used to determine your relationship. All this information has told your dog who you are and what role you wish to play in his life. It’s also inf ..read more

By Sean O’Shea While typically we associate the abuse of dogs with denying them food, shelter, or physically harming them, the abuse I see in my work is far more common, insidious, and acceptable. Why insidious? Because it’s abuse that is shared under the guise of love, caring, or just a lack of knowledge. So many owners mistakenly associate leadership (creating a framework of rules and expectations), structure (daily habits, routines, patterns), and accountability (consequences for breaking known rules, or making poor choices in general) with being mean, nasty, and harsh. These owners just w ..read more

By Sean O’Shea 1) Thou shall only pet, soothe, and share soft energy with a dog when they are in a healthy and positive state of mind.  We learned in The Ten Commandments Of Dog Training (Don’t!) that sharing soft energy or soothing interactions with our dogs when they’re in an unhealthy state will likely reinforce and strengthen the unwanted behavior. Remember this phrase to help you: What you pet is what you get! So be mindful to use your interactions to cultivate positive mental states rather than negative. Instead of coddling and soothing your dog at the first sign of distr ..read more

By Sean O’Shea What’s the number one question we get from owners? When can we pet him? When can we love on him? When can he be on the couch? When can he have total freedom? Okay, that’s several questions, but you get the idea, right? When people get dogs they don’t get them thinking they’ll have to temper their affection. They don’t think couch privilege might not be on the menu. They don’t think they’ll have to restrict their dog’s ability to roam the house. But, if things have gone sideways with their dog’s behavior and their relationship with their dog, changing or adjusting these things ..read more

By Sean O’Shea Few industries have as much contentious, friction-filled, vitriolic, opinionated, near-religious beliefs being flung around as does the dog training world. Opinionated owners and trainers will noisily (and nastily) condemn the tools, training methods, and approaches being used by others. It might be pure positive trainers (or believers) cursing prong collars, e-collars, and/or any form of correction – or even saying “no” to your dog – or perhaps it’s “balanced” trainers slinging mud at each other for perceived poor training, or training that doesn’t mesh with their beliefs. Reg ..read more

By Sean O’Shea So how come things have gotten so much more dicey with our dogs? How come there seems to be far more ill-behaved dogs than the “good old days”? How come there’s so much aggression, resource guarding, possessiveness, separation anxiety, reactivity, and so on? Am I just out of touch and remembering romantically those past days when dogs seemed to be dogs and humans seemed to be humans – and both seemed to be the better for it? I’m not so sure. I’m 48. I was born in the late 60’s. I remember very clearly the way our dogs lived with us (and the way most of my friend’s dogs did as we ..read more