It's no secret that dog agility is my passion. 2016 is going to be my 12th consecutive year of competing in this great sport. For several years, I've taught beginner dog agility classes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I decided to put together a video showing what I teach in this introductory class to give [Read more...]

Cricket has been taught to lie on her mat using shaping. When it comes to positive reinforcement based clicker training, there are four major ways of getting behavior: shaping, luring, targeting, and capturing. There are other ways, including physical modeling, but they have limited applications and are rarely used by most force-free trainers. In [Read more...]

Adopting a new dog is a very exciting time for you and your new friend. The biggest mistake that new dog owners make is giving the dog too much freedom, too soon. By setting some ground rules as soon as you bring your dog home, you can prevent bad behaviors from starting in the first [Read more...]

On Saturday, February 13th, Strata and I will be returning to the Westminster Kennel Club Masters Agility Championship in New York City! We had a great time last year, earning two clean runs and finishing in 8th place in the highly competitive 16" height class after the first two rounds. Because of the way the [Read more...]

There are so many choices when it comes to adding a new dog to your household. There are hundreds of breeds to choose from, not to mention the thousands of wonderful dogs in shelters across the country. If you have never had a dog before, or haven’t had one since childhood, it can be overwhelming! Here [Read more...]

The cue "sit" was only added when we were willing to bet $10 that this puppy would put her bum on the ground immediately after we said it. What is a cue? A cue is a name or label for a particular behavior. It is the “green light” for the dog that tells [Read more...]