I was recently asked an interesting question.  “If you could give a beginner to dog sports one piece of advice, what would that be?”

I had to think about this for a bit, because interesting questions deserve well thought out answers.

So…here’s my one piece of advice:

Keep your dog in the game.

That must be your number one priority, regardless of your dog sport or what you might be working on.

As you start each training session you may want to ask yourself, “Am I having fun?  Is my dog having fun?” “Are we enjoying this sport that we are doing together?” Continue to ask yourself these questions throughout your training session, until it becomes second nature to check in on your mutual enthusiasm for the training process.  

All experienced trainers will tell you that working with an excited and engaged partner makes training incredibly easy, whereas working…

Punishment is used in training to change behavior.  It is a consequence the dog wishes to avoid.

Let’s use crooked sits as an example.  If your dog performs a crooked sit in heel position, you’ll want to make that behavior less likely next time. How might you use punishment?

You can with-hold (-) something that the dog wants like cookies, toys or praise when your dog sits crooked. You are using -P.

Or you can add (+) some sort of physical discomfort technique for the same purpose (collar correction or other physical manipulation).  Your dog won’t want you to do that in the future so straight sits become more likely (+P).  Or you can verbally harass the dog (mental force) to make him uncomfortable, so next time he will try to avoid that by sitting straight (also +P),

If it makes you feel better you can actually straighten the dog (maybe give a…