Advice & Adventures 

Part of thwarting reactivity in humans and dogs is to look for the early warning signs that you (or they) are getting riled up.The idea is that it is way easier to shut down reactivity at the very early stages, when there's just low level concern, rather than later once that concern has swelled in to a frothing furor. If you put a few items on your credit card and then pay off that small amount-no big deal.

The learning process is as follows: Set your objective; try; fail; adjust; try again. Even though, objectively, I know this, I still always want to skip the part where I fail over and over and over again. It's embarrassing. It's demoralizing. It's not fun no matter how you spin it. It is, though, an inevitable and ugly and unfortunate step you must take when you are learning something new. Against all logic, I thought that with enough planning and reading, maybe I could

Working with this idea that the dogs needed to be in their front brain before leaving for our neighborhood safaris, I started with the front door. Usually we would just hook them all up to their leashes and hope no one got knocked unconscious as we all piled out the front door. Today, on this, the first day or their retraining, I lined them all up and told them to "wait." I use "wait" to mean "don't move forward goddammit" and usually use it when we are hiking down someth

My first week trying to figure out how to retrain my reactive dog pack ended up turning into an excavation of my soul and a reflection on where I currently am in life. (Follow me for more light and easy dog training tips!!!!) And, currently, in my life, I am in the middle of a scorched-earth, take no prisoners, I-hate-my-job kind of warpath with the school district I teach in.