Your Dog's Best Life

Maggie Evans and Liane start off talking about the mechanics of dog training, then things get out of hand! From there they leap into a debate of the pros and cons of shaping during luring (Yes, fasten your seatbelts, geekiness ahead!), and the difference in Maggie's heel work vs Liane's. From there they move into how mechanics affects training your dog to lie Down; how Liane teaches Stay vs how Ma...

In spite of the 'fuzziness' of the word, how our dog sees us is incredibly important to our overall life with our dog. Relationship implies give and take as well as mutual interest and obligation. Liane explains the ins and outs of how to improve your relationship with your dog.

In a recent video circulating on social media, a pitbull-type dog attacks a draft horse in a public park. In this episode Liane discusses how to interpret situations like this. Liane argues that dogs that attack other animals are not 'bad' rather they were given an opportunity to express instinctual drives. Owners need to understand what their dogs were bred to do and take action to prevent traged...

In this episode, Liane visits the many reasons the our dogs to come when called, and how to fix our dog's recall

In this episode, Liane Explores the shifting views of what a dog is both biologically, and within our family. She discusses how these views affect our dog's ability to enjoy their best life, and how our beliefs affect our care for our dogs.

So often we find ourselves struggling for our dog's attention, repeating cues, and being ignored. In this min-cast, Liane explains why that happens and how to fix it!

In this episode, Liane discusses her dog, Dice's recent injury, and what it's like to deal with an injured, high-drive dog without going nuts. She covers everything from how to address the injury in the moment, how to ensure your vet sees you right away, and how to work through keeping a high-drive dog sane during the healing process. Liane also discusses how she would deal with dogs that are high...

In this episode, Liane discusses how dogs create habits, and how training through those habits can be complex and cause our training to seem ineffective. She discusses why habits exist, how they function in the real world, and how to work through them when they affect your training.

In this podcast Liane introduces you to the incredible versatility or target training in dogs (and other critters too!). By teaching our dogs this incredibly simple task, we can create a diversity of behaviors. Targeting (or Touch) is the January Training Challenge on Liane's FB Page, Empire Ridge Ranch. Show notes can be found here: https://www.empireridgeranch.com/post/teach-your-dog-touch

In this podcast Nita Gandera and Liane Ehrich discuss using your leash to prevent unwanted behaviors when your dog is in the house. Many common issues that we face as dog trainers are caused by our dog's ability to explore their entire indoor environment without supervision. Liane and Nita discuss how teething works, how to do it, when to do it, and why to do it.

In this episode, Liane discusses why how we define our dog, and how we look at our dog's behavior affects how we see our dog. She also discusses what we can do to fix a broken relationship with our dog, how to avoid a confrontational relationship with our dog, and what to do if our dog doesn't live up to our expectations

Maggie and Liane discuss the three most common forms of aggression that we see in dogs: resource guarding, dog on dog aggression, and human aggression. We discuss strategies to prevent aggression from occurring in our dogs, and ways to mitigate some existing aggression. We also discuss when to bring in professional help.

Too often our dog training plans fail because we didn't spend enough time setting up a successful picture. In this episode, Liane discusses how to ensure that your dog has every chance to succeed in training. We also examine what to do if training doesn't succeed as planned. Shownotes can be found at: https://www.empireridgeranch.com/blog

In this episode Liane explores what Impulse control is, and how to gain a better understanding of how to help our dogs make better decisions. Liane Explains the difference between Impulse Control and Stimulus Control, and why creating a dog with better stimulus control is the way forward with a dog who may exhibit behaviors that we describe as impulsive, including jumping up, aggression, and the l...

Liane is all by herself on this one, so be kind! In this podcast she discusses the reason that positive reinforcement training fails and how you can avoid these common pitfalls. Positive reinforcement training can be incredibly powerful, and almost anything can be trained using positive reinforcement training, yet, oftentimes we hear that reward based trining failed. Why is this? Learn how to ensu...

Emily got a new gig as owner of one of Tucson's premier pet sitting companies, so we thought we'd talk a little about her company, Casas and Critters, as well as Liane's businesses, Empire Ridge Ranch, her dog training company, and The Dog Spot, a trainers co-op in Tucson. For additional information, please visit our shownotes here: https://www.empireridgeranch.com/post/emily-s-got-a-new-gig-show-...

Emily and Liane discuss how to ensure pet safety when forced to evacuate, when traveling, and when leaving pets in the care of sitters when traveling. This detailed podcast describes all of the things to keep in mind to ensure that in the event of an emergency, planned or unplanned travel with your pets, or you leave your pets with a caretaker everyone stays safe. For the purposes of our show note...

Maggie and Liane discuss how to address frustration in dog training. This is a dense subject with many facets, and we attempt to break it down and create real life solutions to help dogs deal with frustration. Frustration is part of every day life, and as it is part of the RAGE System as outlined by Panksepp, it can be incredibly powerful. Ny introducing small levels of frustration into dog traini...

Liane and Emily discuss the pros and cons of dog parks and day cares, and provide tips to help ensure that your dog enjoys their day care or dog park experience. We discuss what we see as the fundamental flaws of dog parks and day care centers, and how to ensure that dog owners have the tools to use these places safely. Dog Daycare and dog parks are both recent phenomena in the world of our dogs,...

Emily and Liane discuss how they would solve the problem of dogs rushing and barking when strangers arrive at the door. We also discuss what we teach in basics and puppy classes and why.

This week, Emily and Liane discuss Separation Anxiety in dogs. We drill down to look at the symptoms associated with separation anxiety, and the various causes as described in the 2020 research paper entitled, Developing Diagnostic Frameworks in Veterinary Behavior Medicine: Disambiguating Separation Related Problems in Dogs (full link and explanation can be found in our show notes). We discuss wa...

This week we spoke with Randi Hubbard about the dog sport, Rally. The AKC recently introduced virtual rally titles for Rally Novice and Rally Intermediate. We discuss what rally is, how to get started, what you need to work on, and how to enter your first dog show. For all links and shownotes, please visit our website: https://www.empireridgeranch.com/post/dog-sports-rally-with-randi-hubbard If yo...

Emily and Liane interview Nita Gandara, KPA, CPDT-KSA about the need to build resilience in our dogs. We discuss methods and techniques that Nita uses to help alleviate fear in dogs and build confidence. Full show notes can be found at: https://www.empireridgeranch.com/post/nita-gandara-building-resilience-in-dogs-shownotes

In this episode Liane and Emily discuss the two most common stress-models used to assess dog behavior. We discuss trigger stacking and the layered stress model, how they affect your dog (and you!) and what actions you can take to alleviate stress in your dog. Additional information on this podcast episode can be found at https://www.empireridgeranch.com/post/9-understanding-stress-in-your-dog-show...

Liane and Emily discuss compulsive behaviors seen in pet dogs. We discuss how to identify them, address them, the breeds most likely to exhibit them, and how to work with dogs who already have them. For complete show notes go to: https://www.empireridgeranch.com/post/8-compulsive-behaviors-in-dogs-shownotes