Interview conducted by: Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA, CSAT, CCUI, FFCT At DBI we believe that no person, no family, and certainly no dog trainer or behaviorist is an island. If you read our blog regularly, you already know that we believe that if you are a behavior analyst by profession, you are not your dog’s behavior analyst. But you may not know that we often collaborate with other dog training professionals to increase our knowledge and skills, and when we are working with a client whose behavioral presentation falls beyond our scope or expertise. Collaboration with other qualified ..read more

By Ran Courant-Morgan, M.S., BCBA, LBA Here at DBI, we are preparing for our summer workshop at the Canine Center at Hessian Hill in upstate New York. During this workshop, many dogs will be spending time in the car while they wait for other dogs to finish their turns or while we’re doing human-only exercises. Some people are already familiar with how to do this safely and comfortably, but car crating is brand new for other people (including us!). Here are some resources and tips we have gathered from a range of sources about safe and comfortable car crating. Clean Run actually has a whole sec ..read more

By Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA In the last installment of Kerby the Herding Dog, I wrote about bringing Kerby to a friend’s farm to see how he felt about sheep. Discovering that he is, in fact, very enthusiastic about sheep and farms in general, it was time to start training. But what to train and how to train it? I’ve already written quite a bit about my desire for a positive reinforcement-based approach, but positive reinforcement training plans can look a lot of different ways.  Trial-and-error learning I suspect that most of us have had some experience with trial-and-error l ..read more

Interview conducted by: Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA, CSAT, CCUI, FFCT At DBI we believe that no person, no family, and certainly no dog trainer or behaviorist is an island. If you read our blog regularly, you already know that we believe that if you are a behavior analyst by profession, you are not your dog’s behavior analyst. But you may not know that we often collaborate with other dog training professionals to increase our knowledge and skills, and when we are working with a client whose behavioral presentation falls beyond our scope or expertise. Collaboration with other qualified ..read more

By Ran Courant-Morgan, M.S., BCBA, CCUI, ADT-IAABC, FPPE “Leave it” used to be one of my favorite things to teach because it seemed so effective so quickly. I would start by standing in plain view of my dog, who, in most cases, had been eating treats from my hand just moments before. I would then pick up a treat and place it in my palm, closing my fingers around it. And then I would lower my closed fist to the dog’s nose.  Of course, this sweet animal – who, again, had been eating this exact treat from this exact hand just a few minutes ago – would try to eat the treat. They would lean in ..read more

Interview conducted by: Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA, CSAT, CCUI, FFCT At DBI we believe that no person, no family, and certainly no dog trainer or behaviorist is an island. If you read our blog regularly, you already know that we believe that if you are a behavior analyst by profession, you are not your dog’s behavior analyst. But you may not know that we often collaborate with other dog training professionals to increase our knowledge and skills, and when we are working with a client whose behavioral presentation falls beyond our scope or expertise. Collaboration with other qualified ..read more

By Ran Courant-Morgan, M.S., BCBA, CCUI, ADT-IAABC, LFPE In September 2012, my wife and I took our dogs and went up to New Hampshire for our anniversary weekend. It was our second wedding anniversary; on the first, we had adopted a puppy, and we brought her and our other dog with us for this year’s adventure. The cabin is on a dead end dirt road with the houses of families who have been going there for a hundred years (at that point, it was only 90 years, but you get the idea), and the general culture is that dogs are loose: they run around off leash, sleep on the docks, and visit the other do ..read more

Interview conducted by: Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA, CSAT, CCUI, FFCT At DBI we believe that no person, no family, and certainly no dog trainer or behaviorist is an island. If you read our blog regularly, you already know that we believe that if you are a behavior analyst by profession, you are not your dog’s behavior analyst. But you may not know that we often collaborate with other dog training professionals to increase our knowledge and skills, and when we are working with a client whose behavioral presentation falls beyond our scope or expertise. Collaboration with other qualified ..read more

By Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA Kerby’s first introduction to sheep If you’ve been following along on the blog, you’ll know that I have been exploring the fascinating world of herding with Kerby, my 2.5 year old mini Australian shepherd. After a few weeks of visits to our local farm I began to reach out to colleagues and search for locations to expose Kerby to stock. I also began to read Barbara Buchmayer’s Positive Herding 101: Dog-friendly training, the only book I could find that truly took a positive reinforcement-based approach to teaching a dog the skills for herding.  Kerb ..read more

By Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA, CSAT, CCUI, FFCP The dog we shared our lives with, before Kerby, was a terrier mix named Levi. He was about 45 pounds and looked something like the Tramp from the Disney Movie Lady and the Tramp (see below). Levi had the very terrible fortune to have experienced multiple traumatic incidents with other dogs in his lifetime. It didn’t seem to matter if I was walking Levi on-leash in a neighborhood or on a long-line in a park or wooded trail covered by a leash law, Levi seemed to be a magnet for dogs and conflict. As you can imagine, this resulted in some ..read more