Acknowledge Dogs - Matador Canine

Many dogs are going to be having a rough time with all of us going back to our old routine and it is going to come to a shock to our dogs. Do not wait for them to develop the problem. Be proactive and ensure they aren't going to be destroying the house our inuring themselves. 

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your dog is to drop the leash. Of course only do this in a safe space where your dog is not going to get hurt. Training your dog is about shaping the behavior through operant conditioning and should be fun. If you do those things right your dog should want to be near you since they see you as part of the picture of reinforcement. Dropping the leash forces yo...

How do we teach our dogs that certain things are not to be played with or feared. Some dogs want to chase the vacuum and others want to hide as far as possible. There is a temperament aspect we must consider but we talk about building up their confidence and desensitizing them from such stimulus. 

Today we break down just one way to train your dog into turning around and backing themselves up until they are between your legs. It is a trick that should be broken down into their individual pieces and trained separately first. Good luck and as always with Trick Tuesday, share your progress with me on social media!

Now that everyone is going back the life they had pre-covid, our dogs are going to be experiencing things either for the first time or something they have not had to deal with in a while. Set them up for success by practicing before you shock them with a new daily routine. 

Morning routines can set the tone for the day. As a popular trend among celebrate wannabes and YouTube influences, formulating your morning routine should include some stable items. Your dog should not see the morning as a time to be wild and crazy but actually a calming and rewarding based experience. For this you need to teach them what they need to know in order for them to be successful and no...

What happens when you reward a behavior? That behavior will increase in frequency to increase the reinforcement. But what happens when we don't realize that we are rewarding the wrong thing. The first step is to recognize what the dogs preferred reinforcement is and how we can use that to eliminate bad behaviors through extinction and reward them for good behavior. IF we use the reinforcer wrong t...

Of course when we work with our dogs we are going to get excited. We are also instructed to get excited when our dog is not paying attention to us but what happens when we go to far. It is absolutely possible to be too exciting and scare the hell out of our dogs when they are getting over fears or if they are startled by our excitement and their temperament is fearful. Make sure that you are worki...

For todays trick we are going to break down the complex behavior of teaching your dog to close a door. There are a milion ways to teach a dog to do this but this is mine.  1. Teach a target 2. Place the target in close proximity to the door. 3 Manipulate the target until the door misses the target but hits the door.  4. Add in the cue under stimulus control. 5 Work through the reward sch...

One thing that all trainers can agree on is that timing is critical to successful training. Wither you prefer positive reinforcement training or strictly compulsion the timing of the reward or punishment determines how effective your communication is. If you aren't having someone tell you as a third party viewer or you yourself are not recording and looking back on your training, than your timing...

Knowing who you are and who you are trying to become is critical if you are going to be a effective trainer, handler, owner, and communicator. Boiling down personalities into these Five Modes helps us understand how someone might deal with criticism and how we can effectively communicate with them and still get the job done. The most important part is to always be level headed. 

When it comes to planning out your training what steps should come next, its good to have an outline that flows smoothly across most training styles, disciplines, and personalities. Using the Teach, Train, Proof, Test outline you can insure you are not jumping over any steps and progressing effectively through the routines. 

Teaching someone or a dog how to do something is usually met with a result that lack the same precision that you described. Using the EDGE method of teaching you can shorten that amount of time and get back to the important training. 

Your dogs need to found value in us just like we find it in them, your mother, or your best friend and spouse. The problem is we think they come programmed to love us but really it takes a lot of work and training to build that relationship. No one ever loved being forced to be with someone, just look back at History of tyrannical Kings and Queens. Do your training and exercises right and there wi...

Rewarding your dog every time in only 1/3 of the puzzle. You need to go through the next two and actually schedule out the progression. It is not something you can do on the spot without years of practice and planning. Start thinking about what in your life is on a variable schedule.

Sometimes our dogs do very interesting behaviors and it is up to us to decipher the behavior and come up with a new solution using what we know. In these case a variable reward schedule and a superstitious behavior worked hand in hand to create this problem that took a management and  consistency to fix. 

We are starting off season 1 with a strange first topic. The Six Fluencies of Behavior. There are ways to train dogs and then their are ways to get those behaviors fluent in all scenarios. This is the order I have worked with and worked hundreds of dogs in. Starting with Precision than moving onto the five others in order to train advanced obedience, canine sports, and fun tricks.