Last week, Fernando Dosta was at Leerburg for a 5 day decoy seminar. Fernando lives in France and is one of the top French Ring decoys in the world. In this video, he is teaching Ed's 14 month old Malinois the foundation of safe down field bites.

This week's newsletter video was filmed this weekend here at Leerburg. The video you are watching is of my 14 month old Malinois puppy, Bart, playing engagement games with our friend Forrest Micke. Forrest is a student of Michael Ellis' system of dog training.

This video is a short lecture by Michael Ellis, at a Leerburg seminar, explaining why it is so important to reward your dog correctly while training the dog to heel.

Exerpts from our new DVD, Training the Jumps with Michael Ells, that will be released in late November.

In the begining of training the jump, trainers use a raised touch pad like our Rubber Touch Tubs. The reason for this is that it is very obvious when the dog has to put his feet up on a raised touch pad. As training progresses, we add an additional flat touch pad on top of the raised touch pad with the intention of eliminating the raised touch pad. In the end, our goal will be for the dog to go from one flat touch pad to another flat touch pad.

This short video was filmed at a Michael Ellis seminar here at Leerburg in the summer of 2009. Michael is helping our friend, Robin Larson, who is working her puppy on positions.

Michael Ellis on capping a dog's drive and why it is just as important for pet dog owners as it is for working dog owners. Michael also explains the relationship between using a toy reward vs. a food reward in your dog training. He talks about how some dogs will always prefer a food reward, while others start out preferring a food reward and mature into preferring a toy reward.

This is part of a lecture on classical conditioning that Michael Ellis gives on the opening morning for his two day course on remote collars.

Cindy and Rush building search with escort and face attack.

Helpers are Michael Ellis and Todd Dunlap.

In Mondioring, the dog must search the field for a helper in a bite suit. When he finds the decoy, he is to do a bark and hold (no bites) followed by an escort. During the escort, the decoy tries to escape. Every meter the decoy gets away from the dog before the bite results in points lost. You will see how we train our dogs to do an escort so the decoy simply cannot get away without the dog biting.

The majority of emails we get from people involve behavioral problems with their dogs. The vast majority of these problems stem from a lack of pack structure. This short video talks about the rules that dogs must live by. The lecture comes directly out of our DVD, Establishing Pack Structure with the Family Pet.