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There is a need for well-behaved canine companions. Dogs are a lot happier when they are under control. They are meant to be with people, and it’s much more pleasurable to walk with a dog that’s under control on a loose leash.

I named my business “Loose Leash Canine” because I believe it is the foundation for all trainings. Too many people believe the leash and collar are to direct that dog where you want to go. The leash is not meant to be used to steer or lead a dog. In my opinion, the only thing that leash is for is to get the attention of your canine partner and should be thought of as way to “tap the dog on the shoulder” to get his attention. Think of it this way - if I was to grab a hold of your wrist and start pulling towards me, your first reaction (other than screaming stranger danger and throwing a punch) would be to pull away from me. We, as humans, do that; why do we not think a dog would do the same thing?  This means  that, the more you pull on a dog's leash, the more they are going to pull against you in an attempt to get some relief from the constant pulling of his collar. Your dog should key on your body movements instead of the yank of a leash. 

I am very open when I talk to new clients in telling them my trainings consist of 80% training of the owner and 20% training the dog. As much as we don’t want to believe this, the majority of a dog's problems are the result of mistakes made by the one at the other end of leash. The problem is that I couldn’t name my company “fix the owners” academy. The other thing I tell all new clients is I also train 80% positive reinforcement and 20% compulsion. So what does that mean?  When I say positive reinforcement, most people think of the trainer with the 1980s fanny pack full of stinky dog treats. Of course, this is one way, but personally I choose not to walk around with a pocket full of hotdogs. There are many other ways to praise a dog that do not involve pieces of liver. I would rather my dogs get their praise through a pat on the head or a verbal “good boy.”  Trust me when I say, when done right, your dog will enjoy your pats as much as he will that piece of hotdog.

So now that you understand the praise side, let's talk about the compulsion aspect of training. Dogs have learned cause and effect for centuries, way before humans got involved. Think of it this way, when a mother dog has a litter of puppies, and the one pup bites her a little too hard, she doesn’t make a noise and give that pup a little extra milk. What she does is grab that pup and scold her so that the pup understands that biting too hard has consequences. Please don’t get me wrong; I am not into beating or hurting a dog. That only causes an overly submissive dog.  What I am into is showing, teaching, then making the dog do what is asked.  Those three steps may take days or weeks to get through. The making side may just be me changing directions or using my voice to let the dog know that I am displeased with his actions. This can be summed up in my training mantra which is that I make the right things easy and the wrong things hard. 

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So what does that look like practically? Take, for example, the dog that is walking alongside you with his head at your leg and paying attention to you.  This is a dog who is doing the right thing, so I am going to make his life easy by giving him a loose leash and leaving him alone. On the other hand, we have the dog who is pulling the owner down the street while paying no attention to anything in particular. This is a dog who is doing the wrong thing, so I am going to make his life harder by changing directions in my walk and letting him hit the end of the leash and having to come back to me.  Once he comes back to me and is walking alongside me, he is now doing the right thing, so I reward him with a “good boy” while making sure he has a loose leash.  Oh yea, and leaving him alone.  

Let’s talk about the use of treats during training. As I have said previously, I am not a huge fan of relying on treats to lure the dog into doing what you want.  What happens when you don’t have that treat? Let me answer that with a story of a client who came to me needing help with a very exuberant shepherd cross. As I was talking to the owner, I asked her to sit her dog. The owner immediately reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of treats, reached her hand above the dog’s head, and started a chant of “sit Rocky sit." After a minute of this, while the dog was doing a yoga pose to get the treat from above his head, he sat down, and the owner fed him. What did this teach the dog? In my opinion, it only taught the dog a way to satisfy his food drive. What if the dog doesn’t have a high food drive or (in most cases) has a prey or play drive that overrides the want for that Oscar Meyer? I will tell you what happens - the dog ignores your request and does what he wants. Take the dog that takes off chasing the neighborhood kid riding his bike down the road.  As that dog takes off, you start screaming for him to come back while waiving that sausage above your head. There is a split second where the dog realizes he could go back for that snack, or he could do everything his little heart desires and chase that poor kid. I promise you’ll see that middle paw come up as he runs through the gate with little or no regard for your promise of a tasty treat. I am not saying treats don’t have their place in modern dog training; I am just saying the treat shouldn’t be the basis for your dog's learning. 

Let me give you a scenario all too familiar with a lot of you. You wake up on that Saturday morning and find it is the perfect day to take your canine family member, Pete, out for a refreshing walk. You step to your front door and peer out to make sure no one is around as you wrestle Pete, keeping him from pulling you down the front steps of your home. You love to walk Pete but know he loves to chase Mr. Johnson’s cat and lunge at every Saturday morning bicyclist, but you’re up to the challenge and head out the front door. The walk is going great for the first quarter mile; then you see it.  A hundred yards in front of you is the neighborhood kid riding his bike towards you. You begin to imagine Pete seeing the young boy with his bike and hitting the end of the leash pulling you towards said lad. As the boy and his bike approach, you are going to make sure this is the time you have control over Pete. Your grip on the leash gets tighter, and you pull him a little closer to you. Contrary to your best attempt, as the bike (with his wide-eyed juvenile) passes by, Pete does what Pete does and lunges towards the bike while you attempted to reel him back like your life, and the poor bicyclist, depended on it. Once you get Pete under control and you do a few cleansing breaths, you start to question what went wrong. You had a hold of him; why did he lunge like he did?  Let's look at this through the eyes of Pete. He finally gets out of the house with his favorite human companion and starts down the road he knows so well. As the two of you are walking along, Pete feels his human walking partner become stressed. He realizes this because he can sense the change in the mood as well as the tightening of his leash, and he gets pulled in close. In Pete’s mind, his owner has detected something dangerous. As the dog looks out, the only thing different is the poor kid on the bike riding towards him, so if mom/dad is scared of this two-wheeled monstrosity, he must be afraid of it as well. He goes into defense drive and lunges at the bike while barking to get it away. What I would like you all to take from this story is that, by tightening the leash, the owner almost guaranteed that Pete would react the way he did. I understand this is not always the case; there are dogs who are incredibly high in prey drive and are going to chase anything that runs from them. Why not give your dog a chance to do the right thing by relaxing the leash and acting like there is no problem? It’s just another day. Listen, you have a six foot leash (don’t get me started on how much I hate the retractable leashes), so, if something happens, just turn and go the other way. It’s not the end of the world. Remember my saying, “Make the right things easy, and the wrong things hard.”  Well, in the above scenario, you made Pete feel like he was going to do something wrong way before he even considered it.

​So a little about myself and my qualifications to teach you and your canine family member. Like a lot of people growing up in rural America, I don’t recall a time when my family didn’t have a few dogs running around the pastures. In my case, my dad made it very clear that, if there were dogs on the property, they had to mind. So, out of necessity, us kids learned how to make those dogs obey. Of course we made a lot of mistakes, and I cringe when I think of some of the tactics we used, but we always had well behaved dogs that went everywhere with us. Over the years, I learned from my mistakes and, while still young, had the good fortune to work with some really good trainers who taught me the art of patience over brute force. Because of my background with dogs, it was a perfect match that my career path would be with a canine partner. Law enforcement was my calling. It only took a little over a year before I was assigned to the canine team where I worked two high-drive Malinois over an almost twenty year span. It was during my time at the Sheriff’s office that I had the incredible opportunity to train and learn from, in my opinion, some of the best dog trainers in the nation, as well as numerous trainers/handlers from Germany, France, and Great Britain. My career would not be what it is without the guidance from professional trainers/handlers like Mike Popps and Danny LeMasters, to name a few. After getting hurt (on a dog call of all things), I was medically retired and sent away looking for my new calling. I found it training and handling narcotics and explosive dogs for a military contractor. Scent work was my new adrenaline rush; I loved it. After almost six years with the military contractor, I took a job working for the American Kennel Club as an inspector. It was during this time that I started training friends and family members' dogs on the side to support my weekend adventures. After six years, my stint with the AKC was over, so I made the leap and put my shingle out as a dog trainer, and that’s where I am today. Over the years, I have been certified through the state of California as well as the Federal government to train and handle dogs, but I do not currently (and will not) hold any certifications in regards to training. There are too many companies that make money by selling dog training certs that are not worth the paper they are written on. Of course, this is only my opinion. If I was going to look for a trainer, I would first watch him work a client's dog then ask what his/her experience is with different breeds and training genres. I would much rather find the trainer who has worked thousands of dogs in many different disciplines than the person who took a class and learned the textbook theory of training a dog. But that’s just me.