Photo by Bonner Springs Library (Flickr Creative Commons)
Many of you know that I enjoy teaching my dogs tricks, so today’s post might come as a bit of a surprise. However, there’s one behavior that dog owners love to teach that often [Read more…]
At Crossbones Dog Academy, we work with a lot of puppies! Over one hundred puppies come to us each year for Puppy Day School and group classes. As a result, we get to talk to a lot of people about puppy raising.
Over the past few months, we [Read more…]
Are you a responsible puppy owner? The American Kennel Club’s STAR Puppy program is designed to reward owners who take their puppies to training classes. “STAR” is an acronym for the four critical parts of puppy raising: Socialization, Training, Activity, [Read more…]
{{ UPDATE 2018: This is an old blog post! For the most up-to-date details and unbroken links, please visit our Flex Class page for everything you need to know. }}
We’ve held group dog training classes here in Providence for over two years now. We have always been interested in feedback from our wonderful students. Some of the things we heard back [Read more…]
Loose leash walking is one of the most important skills to master before taking the CGC test, because it is a part of several test items.
In last week’s blog post, An Overview of the AKC Canine Good Citizen (CGC) [Read more…]
Every September, the American Kennel Club sponsors Responsible Dog Ownership Days. On that note, I would like to discuss the Canine Good Citizen program, which rewards responsible dog owners across the country. As an approved [Read more…]
Meet Alice! She is a 9-month-old Border Collie mix puppy. Her owner enrolled her in our Puppy Day School program to work on her socialization skills around other dogs.
Alice missed her critical socialization period while waiting to be adopted. Then, shortly after coming [Read more…]
Last week I started off my series on “How to Get Behavior” with shaping. Now I’m going to explain a bit about luring and how to use a lure to teach behavior.
The term luring refers to the use of a desired reward to coax the dog into achieving the desired behavior. The “desired reward” is nearly always a [Read more…]
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 prospective students an idea of what [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 [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 place.
