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We’ve all done it. Entered trials hoping our dogs will be ready by then. It gives us a goal to shoot for. Now don’t get me wrong. I love goals. I’m a huge fan of goals. I set goals throughout the year in all aspects of my life. If I…

Communication is hard.  It can be confusing and frustrating. We’ve all been there. On both ends. I say something to someone, and they totally misinterpret it. No, that’s not what I meant!  Sometimes they believe me. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they cling to their interpretation…even when I’m adamantly stating that…

I use a lot of cookies when I train. Like really a lot. Especially when I’m teaching behaviors. I tug a lot with my dogs when I train.  Like really a lot. So to be clear, I’m not against rewarding a lot. But it is important to pay attention to…

Recently I haven’t been feeling right. Something was off, just wasn’t sure what it was…. As always, listen to the universe and the answer will come. Yesterday I picked a random podcast and half-way through they talk about “your story”. The story we create for ourselves. A story typically based…

I hear excuses from people all the time.  Today I overheard a young man saying he was too old to start a new endeavor.  According to him, people in the industry would prefer a younger man.  He was willing to throw away his goal based on age.  I took a…

Failure is a word that has a bad bad bad rap. I mean the poor word really did get the short end of the stick. People just have it all wrong. They see failure as something bad. Failure means you’re not good enough, you didn’t try hard enough, people look…

Sportsmanship. It’s a word we hear often. It’s written in every AKC competition catalog. It’s bandied about in professional sports. Lots of people have different opinions on it. We know what it means. But for the most part we don’t really think about it. Except we should. Sportsmanship is the…

When I first learned to train for competition obedience, all problems were solved with more “drive”. “Drive” being loosely defined as getting the dog as “high” (aroused) as possible, i.e., tugging, playing, chasing food, games..anything that increased a dog’s arousal level, which is pretty dangerous when you pair a dog…