In today’s post, I want to address the topic of weakness. Now, we like to believe that we’ve evolved to a level where we don't pick on the weak, at least as adults. As an adult, I know that . As a kid, I definitely picked on those who were weaker at times and got picked on for being weaker at others. But as we mature, we like to think that we’re beyond that. Hopefully we are!

When I was sixteen years old, I got my driver’s license. Like plenty of other sixteen-year-olds, that meant that I started ditching school and doing other stuff. I was determined to find fun stuff to do. On one of these days, I ditched school with a friend to check out the military surplus store, one of those places where you can buy tents and fishing supplies and other military supplies. We didn’t have one of them in our town, but the next town over—Livermore—did.

In this post, I want to talk about insurance. The other day, I started to think about investing in dog training kind of reminds me of the way that people . When I say “investing,” I am talking partially about money, but I’m also talking about effort and time and engagement—everything that goes into the process of training a dog.

In this post, I want to address some of the challenges of the electric training collar. Those of you who know a little about my company know that we use these collars with most of our clients. We do this because, done correctly, the collar allows us to get to an advanced level of off-leash obedience quickly, while being very humane and easy on both the dog and the owner.

In this post, I want to address what dog training really is. I have a very linear mindset, and I’m always trying to fit things into a logical, “A-to-B” framework. When I do reduce dog training to its core, I come up with one concept: controlling outcomes. If you can manage that for a long enough time, then you’ve trained your dog.

I went over to the house and put together a big list of what I wanted them to do regularly. I wanted them to sneak up on him and correct him with the e-collar anytime they saw him chewing, to make sure he had plenty of toys to chew on, to create something called a surrogate (which I’ll address in another post.) The last thing I told them to do was take him on focused walks. They were already walking him every day for 30—40 minutes, but he pulled. We taught him how to walk properly in that session, and I made sure they understood to walk him in a focused manner—right next to their side—from that point on.

In today’s post, I’d like to talk about our expectations for our dogs. We train a lot of service dogs, but this advice applies to any dog. Many people say that they want their dog to watch over them or their kids. When I ask them what this specifically means, they say that they want their dog to “keep them safe.” What does that mean? “Just make sure that we don’t get hurt.”

In this short post, I’d like to talk specifically to people who treat their dogs as if they’re kids. Now, I love both my dogs and my kids. Sometimes even I feel that I love my dogs as much as my kids. But even if you do, there has to be a distinction drawn between them. The reason? Knives.

Right now I’m in Savannah, Georgia for my bother’s wedding. I never bring a razor with me when I travel, so I really needed to shave and my hair was getting long. Now, I’ve been shaving my head by myself for about twenty years. I’m a pretty utilitarian guy. I wear Carhartt shirts every day and try to keep everything simple without fuss or maintenance, so I hadn’t been in a barber’s chair in twenty years.

In this post, I’d like to share a few of my thoughts about dominance. There is a preconception out there among dog trainers that dominance doesn’t exist, founded on the idea that dogs aren’t actually pack animals (which may or may not be true). This idea has gained a lot of traction during the last few years.