Shaping Your Dogs Behavior: Stop, Look, Listen, and Maybe Change Your Own Behavior First

When it comes to getting our dogs to change their behavior, sometimes it's best to change our own behavior first. As a certified professional dog trainer, and loving dog mom to Poncho the dog, one element of communication that I've learned is more important than many others is the art of listening. And with our pet dogs, listening also means observing since body language is a dogs first language. One of our latest Dear Inquisitive Canine advice...

Controversy in Management Route For Dog Aggression

The July 24th 2009 L.A. Times story about a dog named Cotton whose guardian treated his aggression situation with a medical procedure called "Canine Disarming" (filing down of teeth to help prevent bite damage). She had initially tried some behavior modification, even went to the self-proclaimed Dog Whisperer. But it was the dental procedure that stirred up a lot of controversy, at least according to Craig Nakano, the journalist whose follow-up article...

Making Dog Walking Outings More Fun For Your Dog & You

As Poncho and I were on our evening stroll today here in Ventura, we played our "let's say hi to our neighbor dogs as we walk by" game, which made it a lot more fun - for the both of us! Every time we walked by a house where the dogs started barking, I'd say *Hi!*, mention their names (there's Mookie, Zorro, Nick, Guinness and Waylon, red house dog,...