“A month ago we couldn’t even take Boo, our Lhasa Apso mix, out on walks because he would bark and lunge at other dogs no matter how far away they were. It was embarrassing and even dangerous,” says Theresa Montemayor. That changed in October, after Theresa and her husband David attended Dr. Yin’s Reactive Dogs Workshop in Davis, California. After just a couple of weeks, Boo was good enough so that he could participate in a class full of dogs. “Now, with a gentle leader head collar, he can go on walks with no problem—even when he has to pass a lot

Last time we looked at how to use a science-based approach (use of counterconditioning) to dealing with dogs with food bowl aggression and saw that by approaching the problems systematically the solution was pretty straightforward. So how do we tweak that approach to the case where the dog is food aggressive only towards other dogs?

For instance, I accidentally left my treat bag on the hill at a park with a friend and her dog went to sniff it. Rosco attacked him and made him bleed! Yesterday I was playing fetch by the water and another dog came by to investigate the toy I was throwing and Rosco attacked him (They had been playing together so nicely until I made the mistake of getting his throw toy out of the car). I also think he would be possessive aggressive if I have a treat bag and another dog approaches. What should I do? SignedPuzzled in

When I started training my first dog in 1985 I did everything my trainers told me but made slow progress. It wasn’t until years later, when I learned the scientific principles that guide learning in animals that I learned to train efficiently and to easily solve new training problems. Probably 90% of behavioral issues we have with our pets can be solved by understanding and applying the basic learning principles. (For more information see our new DVD: Pet Dogs, Problem Dogs, High Performance Dogs: How Science Can Take Your Training to a New Level). Here are some examples described by

If you peruse the internet for animal training advice, you’ll see a lot of information that seems to make sense, but if you know the science behind how animals learn you know that these statements are misinformed. For instance: A zoo trainer might claim, “It’s difficult to train our lions because they are overly motivated for food. They get so excited that they can’t focus on what we want them to do.” A dog owner might state, “I ignore my dog when he jumps and reward him when he sits, just like that book I read says, but he still jumps to

It’s week 1 of our quarterly 7-week dog class and we have some fun and exciting updates in store. First, this quarter two of our student employees, Lynna and Lauren, get to teach one exercise each week. That allows me and co-instructor, Melissa Morris, CPDT-KA, to assist with the demo so that there are more “demonstrators” for the participants to watch. It also allows us to test out our curriculum for training new instructors to teach our specific training program. As usual, the set of classes started off with our introductory workshop-game show. In this workshop, we find out about