Dog Training Quotes

“When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes.”
― E.B. White

“So what is the fallout for dogs of the Lassie myth? As soon as you bestow intelligence and morality, you bestow the responsibility that goes along with them. In other words, if the dog knows it’s wrong to destroy furniture yet deliberately and maliciously does it, remembers the wrong he did and feels guilt, it feels like he merits a punishment2, doesn’t it? That’s just what dogs have been getting - a lot of punishment. We set them up for all kinds of punishment by overestimating their ability to think. Interestingly, it’s the “cold” behaviorist model that ends up giving dogs a much better crack at meeting the demands we make of them. The myth gives problems to dogs they cannot solve and then punishes them for failing. And the saddest thing is that the main association most dogs have with that punishment is the presence of their owner. This puts a pretty twisted spin on loooving dogs ‘cause they’re so smart, doesn’t it?”
― Jean Donaldson, The Culture Clash

“Commands are essential for helping your dog navigate the unique challenges of paddleboarding… For example, ‘STEADY’ encourages stability, while ‘HOLD ON’ alerts them to an imminent shift.”
― G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup: A Guide to Paddleboarding with your Dog

“A well-fitted dog life jacket provides buoyancy, reduces fatigue, and makes it easier to assist a struggling dog.”
― G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup: A Guide to Paddleboarding with your Dog

“TIP: The air + water temperature should total at least 100°F before taking your dog paddleboarding.”
― G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup: A Guide to Paddleboarding with your Dog

“Before you can teach your dog paddleboarding, you need to master your own paddleboarding skills.”
― G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup: A Guide to Paddleboarding with your Dog

“Effective Logistics Make Paddleboarding with Dogs Smoother: Successfully managing paddleboards, leashes, and dogs requires careful planning to prevent chaos.”
― G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup: A Guide to Paddleboarding with your Dog

“Choose the Right Paddleboard for Stability and Performance: The width of the board directly impacts stability. Select a board that aligns with your paddling skills and your dog’s needs”
― G. Scott Graham, SUP with your Pup: A Guide to Paddleboarding with your Dog

“CU operates within my philosophy of getting the best of both worlds. Training is a dance with two partners. You must meet your dog's needs in order to get the performance you want from him. Dogs need to sniff. Dogs need to greet other dogs. Dogs need to look at things. Dogs need to be normal. The CU exercises offer a structure in which the dogs can be dogs and still learn to be focused, working partners with you. You do not have to sacrifice your dog's "dogness" to create a great performance partner.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“I've seen people get so upset when their dog sniffs the ground. If a dog is sniffing instead of paying attention, it's time to rethink your training plan, not to correct your dog. If your dog is sniffing, is he distracted? Is he stressed? Is he just done for the moment? Dogs have good reasons for sniffing.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Whenever I train a dog who needs nep wads anon, use what I call the Give Me a Break rule structure. Give Me a Break is about giving the dog frequent breaks (using what I call the "quick dismissal") from short, highly rewarding, training sessions and then resuming the session as a reward for the dog's choosing to ask, "Can we keep working?" The goal is to increase the dog's attention and eagerness to work with you. Give Me a Break is simple and powerful.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Can you see how this technique will take pressure off a dog that stresses as opposed to forcing a dog to keep training that instead wants to sniff and disengage? Which style is going to help the dog learn better? Which one will teach handler focus faster?
One way, you are demanding the dog continue working while his mind is drifting away. The other way, the dog is demanding that he continue working.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog

“Many attention problems that people bring their dogs to me to fix are about the hanlder putting too much pressure on the dog to learn things according to an arbitrary training agenda.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“If you keep trying to war with the environment, either you or your puppy is going to lose. There will always be something novel in the environment that will engage your puppy's natural curiosity or appeal to his animal nature; that is when you will lose the war. Sometimes people control everything and put their puppy under severe restrictions so that he never gets a chance to experience anything but interaction with his handler as being rewarding. That, in my opinion, is when the puppy loses.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“Any time you ask a dog to do anything, you are putting pressure on the dog. It does not matter if you are the most positive trainer in the universe; any social interaction puts some measure of pressure on the social beings involved.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“This is why I use the Give Me a Break game structure in so much of my training, because it gives the dogs the opportunity to tell me that they want to keep working. It gives them the choice to take on the pressure of social interaction and work, or to take a break. It makes the conversation between us much more dynamic and much less arbitrary. It is the best way I know of letting the dog tell me how much he is ready for and when he is ready for it.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“Never, during the Whiplash Turn game, use the leash to make the puppy turn to you. Do not take his collar to turn his head to you either. Let the puppy figure it out. Let him learn that his behavior causes new opportunities to arise. Let him get addicted to paying attention to you because the body movements associated with attention behavior, such as turning his head in your direction, cause awesome things to happen.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“When teaching something new, make sure it doesn't look like something old.”
― Leslie McDevitt, Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program

“How to work with your dog's natural traits, instead of battling against them, so you can fulfill their innate needs and achieve your loose lead walking dreams.”
― Simone Mueller, Walking Together: Loose Lead Walking for High Energy Dogs

“When the term 'high-drive' is used throughout this book, it refers to dogs who are highly driven by their environment.

Most hunting dog breeds would be considered as high-drive, as their focus is on their environment, which can make loose-lead walking difficult for them.”
― Simone Mueller, Walking Together: Loose Lead Walking for High Energy Dogs

“Your Dog Has Reached The End Of The Lead - Although this may sound strange, when your dog naturally reaches the end of their lead, this causes pressure to be put onto their collar or harness. This pressure then causes their opposition reflex to kick in. This is not a medical re-flex, but it is something that all living beings will subconsciously do without thinking, to make sure they stay in balance. For example, if someone pulls your sleeve backwards, your automatic reaction is to pull your arm in the opposite direction, to stop them from pulling you over. It is your brain and body's immediate response to stop you from falling over. So, when your dog gets to the end of the lead, and is therefore being pulled backwards, their immediate response is to pull forwards. This cycle then continues, as you pull them back more, they pull forward more.”
― Simone Mueller, Walking Together: Loose Lead Walking for High Energy Dogs

“The last parts of the predatory motor pattern are dissection and eating. This releases happy hormones and promotes relaxation and contentment, so this is what we need to replicate in our cool-down exercises by scattering treats.”
― Simone Mueller, Walking Together: Loose Lead Walking for High Energy Dogs

“Once Zak and I had mastered the basics, I decided to have a go at gun dog training myself. Robin grew tomatoes in his garden. Using the ripest I could find that were nicely soft and squishy, I placed three on the ground behind the dog. Then, using hand gestures, I indicated to Zak which tomato I wanted him to fetch for me. Zak had to learn which way to turn, and then be gentle to avoid puncturing the tomatoes. Finally, after a lot of hard work, everything clicked. All of a sudden, I had a dog that retrieved, and we quickly moved on to picking up feathers so that he could get used to the tickly feeling between his jaws and not instinctively spit them out.”
― Kerry Irving, Max the Miracle Dog: The Heart-warming Tale of a Life-saving Friendship

“The article concludes by describing a phone conversation Ms. Holt had with Mathilde DeCagney, the trainer of Moose, the Jack Russell Terrier who played Eddie on the TV show Frasier.

[Kiley] has nothing wrong with him,” she said, her French accent softening the sharp words. “It’s all you.” I winced, but I knew she was right. She listed the reasons: Kiley is a working dog without a job; he’s a social dog without enough companionship; he’s a smart dog without enough mental stimulation; and he’s a hyper dog without enough exercise.

In other words, Kiley has needs!”
― Kathy Sdao, Plenty in Life is Free

“Adapting this “counting directive” for dog training, we could advise, “Positively reinforce your dog’s good behaviors fifty times each day.”

Not bad, but it’s too technical. Instead, how about, “Fifty times each day, reward your dog when he’s doing something useful or cute?” This is better; it’s concrete and simple.”
― Kathy Sdao, Plenty in Life is Free

“I expand on this “fifty rewards a day” protocol by giving my clients information about how to be successful behavior engineers. I suggest that they “Get SMART” —that is, that they practice “See, Mark And Reward Training.” Those three components—seeing good behavior, marking good behavior (often with a click or a “yes”) and rewarding good behavior—are the core competencies of successful trainers. This trio of skills comprises the technique called “capturing” (or “scanning” by some marine-mammal trainers): capitalizing on the numerous desirable behaviors an animal performs over the course of an average day by: 1) noticing them, 2) pointing them out to the animal, and 3) then giving the animal a reward in order to increase the strength of those behaviors. We make efforts to reinforce behaviors we like so those behaviors become more frequent, more intense and longer.”
― Kathy Sdao, Plenty in Life is Free

“Well, they are dogs, but there’s no “only” about it. Besides being fully deserving of dignity in their own right, dogs can help us figure out how to get along with other beings, human and non-human. Living with dogs presents us with the paint-by-numbers version of relationships, helpfully simplified because it’s stripped of the human complications of verbal language, spiteful (or altruistic) agendas, endless analysis and moral equivocating. Given dogs’ sociability, matchless sensitivity to human body-language, behavioral flexibility and passion for physical play, they are ideal “lab partners” for humans desiring to develop new skills to become better parents, spouses, siblings and friends. This is why discussions about various dog-training methods can get so emotional. They reflect our deepest beliefs about how all relationships should function.”
― Kathy Sdao, Plenty in Life is Free

“Don’t see Control and Management as avoiding the problem, see it as stopping the problem from occurring.”
― Steve Mann, Easy Peasy Doggy Squeezy

“Training is a process, not an event”
― Steve Mann, Easy Peasy Doggy Squeezy

“That is the way I wish my dog to think of me: as a companion and pal, rather than as a terrible and uncertain-tempered god. When I whistle him in he must come promptly, not with his tail between his legs, and belly to earth, but joyously and eagerly, with his body doing an Oriental shimmy in sympathy with his vibrating tail.

It required three months of daily endeavor to accomplish this, for he was a shy pup, but I made it a rule to play with him every day, boisterous and breath-taking romps which lasted for a half hour or more. But invariably, before the completion of these periods, we paused for a few minutes of schooling: never anything drastic, but such simple things as holding a ball in his mouth, or any other thing which suggested itself at the moment. The idea was not to teach him an assortment of tricks, but rather to let him learn that good times and obedience went hang in hand.”
― Burton L Spiller, DRUMMER IN THE WOODS. Twenty-One Wonderful Stories About Grouse Shooting