Training the Pointing Labrador

In this episode, I introduce a new puppy I'm going to showcase over the next year on the podcast and on Facebook.  We also discuss that just responding to your dog's behavior without really thinking about it first can sometimes cause problems.  Dogs will tell you their story.  You  need to step back and listen more sometimes... Happy New Year to All!

In this episode, we look at research that supposedly tells us how dogs know who we are.  There are many interesting ideas about the dog/human relationship, perhaps none more significant than what you actually think about your own dog.  It is a fascinating topic and very helpful when you are engaged in any kind of dog training.

This particular episode is done by request from a man who recently bought a new pup, against his wife's wishes.  The pup came with what appeared to be some health issues and he was worried because his neighbors dogs had come up with odd health issues as well.  He wanted to know what to think of these problems, and what he might be able to do to fix them.  An interesting peak into why dogs often get 'sick'.

In this episode, aimed at my pointing retriever people, we talk about ways to get the pointing dog to point when they may not have pointed yet, or only tend to point for a few seconds before breaking on the bird.  We finish off with a story of a very titled and talented dog who was a fantastic flusher until one magic day in the snow....

In this episode, we talk about the most important ingredient in your dog training endeavors: patience.  Patience can overcome the most determined dogs and dog behavior and can solve most problems encountered in training and achieving your goals.  The story of "The Yellow Phantom", a dog I trained and basically washed out, only to become hugely successful because of his owners patience is a perfect example of how this can work for you and your dog program.

In this episode, we break down the elements of being a good teacher for your canine student.  You're really more of a Project Manager than a simple trainer and it helps to look at all of the pieces that go into a good dog training program.

In this episode we talk about the harm to believing dogs 'should' do something in training before really knowing what they will do and what they think.  Two listener questions are covered, the first on adding additional training responses after early training has been thoroughly conditioned into a dog and the second regarding whether people with physical or learning limitations are capable of training dogs successfully.  Early hint: yes they can.

In this episode we talk about philosophical approaches to raising and training puppies, based on retriever training skills (though it applies to other breeds and dog skills) and then how to negotiate the puppy skills as they grow through the puppy stages.

In this episode, I address some interesting listener questions.  How to introduce a pup to gunfire without any repercussions or pan banging; how to take a well-trained competitive dog and go hunting with all the unpredictability of that without sacrificing your training and finally, when to teach the 'down' response in our field dogs.