How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD (Formerly known as School For The Dogs Podcast)

Someone on the School For The Dogs mailing list sent Annie an angry email accusing her of being out of touch because, with everything going on in the world,  "no one cares about dog training right now." This inspired Annie to outline some reasons why people could, and maybe should, think about dog training and the science of behavior now... perhaps more than ever.  Show notes:  School For The Dogs...

Welcome to Season 2 of School For The Dogs Podcast!  This episode is a conversation show host Annie Grossman had with veterinarian Dr. Lisa Lippman about the thing we are all talking about: COVID19. Annie asked Dr. Lisa if our pets can get sick, if they can get us sick, and the two spoke about how to take necessary precautions to keep our dogs safe.  Most of this episode is from a webinar Dr. Lisa...

Pet videos fuel the Internet, but too often they perpetuate false ideas about dog behavior by misattributing a dog's intentions, or by falsely framing their actions.  Why do we seek to anthropomorphize dog behaviors rather than celebrating all the behavioral commonalties that exist between us and them?  Annie and the acclaimed, prolific blogger Eileen Anderson of EileenAndDogs.com , tackle this qu...

Annie  addresses questions from people who are dealing with dogs who have habits that annoy other dogs, and, ultimately, their owners as well. One owner wants to know how to deal with a new rescue  who is bothering the household's other two dogs and generally causing chaos in the home, and a dog walker asks about how to manage a charge who is constantly trying to hump his walking buddies. In addit...

Leashes, collars and harnesses are some of the first accessories most dog owners acquire when they get a dog, and very soon they come to depend on these tools. But, in this guide to teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash, Annie suggests teaching where you want your dog to walk in relation to your body (right next to your leg), and what you want your dog to be doing on leash (checking in with you...

Native New Yorker Gloria Bardin lives in a one-bedroom apartment with three Dobermans, one pitbull, a Havanese, two mixed breeds and three cats. And yet... she seems totally sane. Annie talked to her about how she has built a life that can accommodate taking care of so many pets.  Notes: Follow Gloria on Instagram: @fourtypawsvstwofeet Follow Beppi on Instagram: @bep.and.zo Garfield Mail:  https:/...

Last fall, Emily Meadows and her husband took in a stray orange tabby kitten who they called Pip. Pip repaid the kindness by terrorizing their other cats and destroying their Ocean City, Maryland home. To help him extend energy in a more appropriate way, Emily began to take him on walks on the beach. She quickly discovered he loved digging in sand, swimming, and even riding surf boards. Six months...

Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Positive Punishment and Negative Reinforcement: You may have heard these terms thrown around, but they're often misused or little understood. Together, they describe four different ways all animals learn by consequences-- aka, Operant Conditioning. In a rush to put up a podcast episode while her young baby naps, Annie challenges herself to describe e...

Up until last month, one of the world's largest collections of dog-related art resided outside St. Louis inside a museum that most of the locals didn't even know about: The Museum Of The Dog. That changed last month, when the museum officially relocated to midtown Manhattan.  Annie interviews the museum's executive directly, Alan Fausel, about the museum's collection, history, and fan favorites. ...

In 2012, Joe Freni's wife surprised him with a puppy they named Lenny. Lenny, they felt, was simply perfect. In fact, he was so perfect that they decided to start enrolling him in competitions.  In the years since, Lenny has received titles both in dog sports and dog shows, the latter culminating in his recent spot in the Westminster Dog Show. Not long after he started showing his dog in the ring,...

The sprightly Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo has gained worldwide acclaim for essentially being an excellent trainer of humans. Specifically, she trains people to "tidy up" their homes. While she might be adept at using positive reinforcement (mostly in the form of her sheer enthusiasm about junk drawers) and other methods that dovetail with Good Dog Training, her approach also  encourages p...

In this Q+A episode, Annie answers a question from a puppy owner whose dog is scared of the crate and stresses out when left alone, and then considers another dog owner who asks if "Attachment Theory" applies to dogs. Visit AnnieGrossman.com/ask or leave a voicemail at 917-414-2625. NOTES Products: Annie's preferred crate, the Revol (get $25 off the Revol with code SFTD25 at checkout through March...

A few years ago, after years of volunteering at rescue organizations and owning both shelter pups and purebred dogs, Cherrie Mahon, a professor of business in Rochester, New York, did something that'd change her life forever: She got a Goldendoodle.  Cherrie fell in love with the breed, and pitched an idea to her mother, a school bus driver who was looking for a retirement career: Maybe they could...

We use dog crates every day at School For The Dogs. They're an integral part of dog training: We recommend them to clients who are house training puppies, incorporate them into class exercises, and transport dogs in them. And yet, all of us who work at our training center agree: Crates... kind of suck! They're clunky and ugly! Noisy! Storing them is a pain, and when you have to open and then colla...

Every dog already knows how to lie down -- your dog lies down all the time! The trick to training a "down" is to teach your dog to do it when you ask for it. That involves adding a cue. In this episode, Annie addresses the difference between a "cue" and a "command," and talks about some of the pitfalls people tend to fall into when attempting to cue a dog -- is the dog responding to your words? Or...

You might consider your dog your "baby," but what happens if you decide to add an actual infant to your family? Jessica Jacobson, owner of NYC's Dapper Dog Training, has spent years coaching families on prepping their dogs for the arrival of a tiny non-furry new family member. Annie and she discuss how she built her career, and go over some key things to consider when training a dog for interspeci...

When we first met Lola Barksdale,  she was a tiny Frenchie puppy in our Kindergarten classes. We had no idea that she would become an Instagram star, or that she was secretly obsessed with unicorns and alpacas, loved purple fruit loops and waffles (which she calls "woofles,"), considered herself a "floofdragon" and had hobbies including interior decorating and counting her own feet. The genius beh...

In the modern era of dog training, people often rush to blame a person or a dog's "energy" for behavior issues.  In this episode, Annie addresses why all the talk about using or observing "energy" in order to train a dog makes her cringe, and also why she thinks the misuse of the word "positive" leads to too many misunderstandings about science-based training.  Notes: John Watson's Psychology As T...

Everyone is impressed by a dog whose eyes meets a human's gaze with magnet-like intensity on cue. Teaching a dog to "touch" his or her eyes to your eyes is a great exercise to practice no matter what the pooch's training level is. When teaching this attention-based behavior to a dog-- whether you use a word such as "Look" or the dog's name -- Annie suggests focusing on your training mechanics befo...

In this episode, Annie offers a follow up to the previous episode, which featured a candid conversation with her husband about her ill-fated attempt to use punishment to keep him from showing her his uvula very time he yawned. Here, she points out some of the similarities and differences between using punishment with dogs and with humans. This episode touches on, among other things: -The long shad...

Annie is happily married to a man named Jason Pedicone, who is basically perfect in every way except... he doesn't cover his mouth when he yawns. So, she decided to use her talents as a dog trainer to train him to change this behavior. But she decided to try something she doesn't normally do with dogs: She attempted to curb his habit by using punishment. While she sort of succeeded, she also got a...

"Shaping" is simply the process of breaking a behavior down to its smallest components and slowly raising your criteria in order to build new behaviors. By reinforcing successive approximations, it's possible to train dogs to do almost anything they are physically capable of doing! In this episode, Annie goes over some key things to think when shaping a new behavior, and describes how to shape a d...

Earlier this year Logan Mikhly and her father Coppy Holzman opened a business unlike any other in NYC: A dog-friendly cafe. Logan has a background in animal rescue, Coppy is a dog-loving serial entrepreneur, and both are obsessed with coffee. Frustrated by the fact that New York's health codes make it nearly impossible for them to grab a cup of joe without having to tie their dogs to a streetlight...

Halloween can be a scary time… for dogs! But it can also be a time to think about how to use training to reduce fears and overcome challenges. In this episode, Annie discusses, among other things: -Ideas for low stress, easy costumes that most dogs can wear without anxiety. -Acclimating a dog to a costume by creating good associations with it over time. -Teaching your dog to wear costumes made out...

After years of researching breeds, Joanie Comenzo of Manhattan decided to get a Welsh Terrier. When she went to pick up her new dog, Nelson, the breeder pushed him into her arms and said "Your puppy is an alpha." Joanie loved him from the moment she saw him, and that love never waned, even after he bit her multiple times, and sent her mother and boyfriend to the hospital. Over the last eight years...