Ty The Dog Guy On The Daily

Today I want to talk to you about pain—because I’m in it! Here’s a little context. Earlier this year, in the spring, I realized I needed to get to the gym. When I was a teenage, I really enjoyed lifting weight. Then life happened. I got busy jobs and eventually started my own company, and I lost the enjoyment of going to the gym. This year, I decided that whether or not I liked it, I needed it. So I started going. I went three to five times a week to lift eights, and I actually started liking it. I rediscovered the enjoyment I had experienced in my teens and early twenties: lifting a lot of weight, feeling good, and getting healthier. Then, in July of this year, I tore my chest muscle and part of my bicep during a bench press. That was just over two months ago. It was an enormous amount of pain, and I’m still in pain to a degree. I can’t move some muscles very well and I definitely can’t lift with my left side. (As you may remember, I wrote a few posts about this.) But yesterday I decided to start going t

In today’s post, I want to talk about maintenance. Quite often, I hear people saying things like: “I just want my dog to be like that service dog that I saw,” or “I want my dog to look like that dog on TV or YouTube.” When they say this, people are typically referring to one of two things: either the high level of training that the other dog received, or the illusion of a maintenance-free dog. It’s not that these people don’t want to take care of their dogs, but when they see a demonstration with a police dog or a video on YouTube, they assume that those dogs are automatically obedient. What people don’t see is the maintenance training that goes into making sure that the dog stays that way. For instance, most police officers I know who train dogs get together for training every week. This is usually at a training club, separate from the everyday training that they might go through around their house or during work. Likewise, service dogs need to be maintained through constant practice and field trips. Th

Well, I hate to ruin things right away—but the perfect dog doesn't exist. That’s a tough thing for me to admit, because when it comes down to it I like to provide my clients with everything they want and need. I want them to have the perfect dog and be the happiest clients in the world. But at the end of the day, no one can create a perfect dog because no one is able to follow training principles perfectly—even dog trainers. It took me a long time to ever admit When I first started dog training, I thought that my clients could never know that my dogs did things wrong sometimes. I believed they would think I was a bad trainer who didn’t know what I was talking about. As time went on, however, I realized that no matter how good a job I do at instructing, I’ll never produce the perfect dog. My dogs are great, but even they aren’t perfect. They don’t cause a mess or chew stuff up, they come when called and heel when I ask them to, they can be left out without causing problems. They’re 96% of what people want o

In this post, I want to talk about mathematics—specifically, addition and subtraction. I like to give formulas to my clients and break them down into easily-digestible, bite-sized chunks. When it comes down to it, everything we want from out dogs fall into addition and subtract: there are things we want to add to our dogs, and things we want to subtract. Addition is usually a proactive thing. We want our dogs to come when called, heel when told, and sit nicely to get dinner. Sometimes subtraction almost seems like the opposite: we want to subtract leash pulling, jumping, peeing in the house. We treat addition and subtraction in different ways, we communicate those concepts in different ways Subtraction is oftentimes the easier of the two to fix. When you want to subtract aggression that’s not as true, but “subtracting” something like jumping or chewing or digging is usually easier to fix. I normally look at two things. First, is the dog being fulfilled properly? Does it have what it needs? It’s frustratin

In this post, I’m going to tell you about a few of my family’s imperfections. Right now, it’s Saturday morning in our house. I’m about to head off to meet a client and the kids have all gone off with my wife. In our family we keep a clean home. (I don’t tidy that much, but my wife does a great job!) If my wife could see what the house looks like right now, however, I know she’d be upset. There are shoes and clothes on the floor, the kids knocked all the pillows off the couch, and some people left some towels on the stairs. And believe me, it can get worse than it is now! We sometimes get a little sloppy, as I’m sure you do too. Here in the living room, next to this little bit of a mess, is my dog. She’s young—just over a year old—and she’s a very high-energy dog. A lot of trainers would say would say: “If you don’t want the dog to chew the shoes or steal the headphones, then you have to hide them from her so she can’t do anything wrong.” But we’ve taught this dog that she needs to calmly relax indoors, even

Today I want to talk about booking travel and how that relates to your dog. I’ve been booking some travel lately and have some other travel coming up. A month or two ago I went to New York for work to get a dog, and I’ve been booking Thanksgiving travel to go back home, I have a trip to San Diego coming up for a work conference, I’m going to Hawaii to work with a service dog. So I’m booking a lot of travel! When I was on my way to New York, I found two flights. One was about $50 more, but it was nonstop—and that’s a big deal when you’re going from Salt Lake City to New York. A layover can mean several hours difference. That’s probably worth $50, right? Coming back I was going to have a service dog with me, so I figured that the extra leg room might be worth the extra money. As I’ve booked all this travel I’ve realized something: you go into a purchase thinking that you’re going to spend a certain amount of money, and then a little shift occurs, and suddenly you’re spending a little more. We’re going out to

In today’s post, I want to talk to you about dog aggression. Specifically, I want to address one of the questions I receive a lot. This is a topic that makes a lot of people frustrated, and come to me saying: “I’m sure I’ve done something wrong, I feel like such a bad dog owner.” I’m describing owners who have dogs with aggression and have been hearing things from people about where that aggression comes from. There’s this weird and strange myth going around that says dogs are only aggressive if people have abused them or trained them to be aggressive. This is crazy, because aggression comes from so many different places. At its root, the majority of the aggression that I see comes from fear, insecurity, and anxiety. When a dog is presented with something that makes it feel fear or anxiety, the dog has three available options: fight, flight, and avoidance. A lot of people are familiar with fight or flight. Watch National Geographic for a little bit and you’ll hear the commentator talk about it. Dogs defi

I want to spit some science at you today. A lot of you out there know me as an esteemed, renowned scientist—and if that’s the case, I don’t know who you’re watching! I’m not a scientist at all. But I was talking with a client today, who happened to be a psychologist, about a recent study that I want to share with you as well. After I shared a training tip with him, he said that it was exactly like a piece of research that he had read about that was published not too long ago. Here are the basics of the study. They found a group of—I think—a hundred people who all had anxiety issues. So they split the group into two: the first group got training that advised them of how to behave when they started to feel stressed. They were given meditation techniques and coping mechanisms. The second group received the same technique, but were told to take a half hour to do them every single day. A year later, they measured both groups on a number of scales. The people who did the exercises as part of their daily routi

This post’s topic is a bit unusual. I want to talk about how I used to be a big dirtbag. Okay, maybe I wasn’t that huge of a dirtbag, but it definitely used to be a part of my personality. (Some people that know me today might say that it still is, but we’ll forget about that for now!) I want to talk about one dirtbag quality that I overcame. As a junior high and high school kid, when something good happened to somebody else I immediately felt jealousy and dislike toward that person. If someone got a good grade on a test or sunk the winning basket, I disliked them. Maybe you can relate. Hopefully, you’ve overcome this as well. It’s a natural part of the human condition, and it happens to a lot of us. When you look at it, that’s so stupid. It’s ridiculous to think that it hurts you when something good happens to someone else. In reality, it does absolutely nothing to you! Luckily, as a sixteen year old kid, I remember having this vivid, emotional “punch-in-the-face” moment when I realized I needed to stop th

Today I want to write a little about ways that we can create mindset. We talk about mindset a lot because it’s the first step to achieving the correct behavior. When your mindset is right, behaving well is laughably easy. But most people struggle to get their dog’s mindset in the right place. They might be trying to get their dog to sit down or stop being aggressive, but the dog is so amped up with adrenaline that they can't properly focus on the command. Anyone can get a calm dog to sit, lie down, or heel, and creating the correct mindset that can get you to that point. Most owners, however, try to start one or two steps into the process. They want their dog to obey, but they haven't done the work of creating the right mindset. I was reminded of this truth in a session at a client’s house recently. As soon as I walked in, I saw that the dog was extremely hyper: she was barking, jumping, and generally going crazy. It was only our second session and the owner admitted to not having done her homework from t

In this post, I’d like to introduce you to a technique I’ve been doing with certain dogs who have anxiety problems. Anxiety issues are huge for many dogs. Sometimes they’re big and the dog is terrified of everything. Sometimes they’re small and the dog is just a little bit anxious when he’s around people or other dogs. Regardless of which issue you’re dealing with, this is an exercise that I stumbled upon years ago and found to help quite a bit. In practice it’s very simple, so I’d like to share it with you. Let me tell the story of how I uncovered this technique. A year ago I was working with a client. I noticed that every time we told the dog to lie down, it would walk over next to the wall or furniture to do so. That dog wanted to be next to something large before it could lie down. The best option would obviously be to lie down next to its owner’s feet, but if we didn’t allow that then the dog would want to lie down near a coffee table or a couch. I realized that the dog was actually gaining strength f

In this post, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about how boring dog training is. Now, I don’t mean what you’re probably thinking! Training is my profession, and it’s also been my passion since I was a teenager. I love it. But I’ve had a few experiences recently that helped me realize how boring “good” dog training really can be. This morning, I did an assembly this morning at a school that’s attended by a young girl with a service dog. The dog does a lot of cool stuff. If she runs off, he will find her. If she has a panic attack, he will help her calm down. He makes sure she doesn’t go into tantrums or fits. But 99% of what the dog does on a typical day is heel calmly by her side, lay down next to her desk, and come when she asks him to come. That’s what he does, day in and day out. The assembly was primarily geared toward telling kids to leave the dog alone during school. The school didn’t want students to be petting the dog, talking the dog, or feeding the dog. Afterwards, I opened it up for a few

Today I want to write a little bit about context, an important element of training that a lot of owners simply don’t consider at all. Let me illustrate this concept with a very easy example: a dog that sits. A lot of people come to us and say “My dog’s trained, he knows how to sit.” So we tell him to sit, and he won’t. The reason is simple. The dog will only sit under contexts A, B, C, and D. Context A might be the dog sitting in the living room with a treat. Context B is the dog in the backyard with a treat. Context C is the dog in the living room with no treat. Context D is the dog on a walk with no distractions. These are all of the contexts in which the dog can obey the “sit” command. When you’re on context R, however—perhaps inside a strange training facility that’s full of distractions—then the dog won’t do it. This is the reality behind most training that I see. Owners make the mistake of only training for a few contexts. They don’t teach their dog what I call “functional obedience”: the ability

Today I want to dispel two of the main myths I see related to dog training commands, both of which are related to the language that we use. The first myth I see all the time is that some commands are better or worse than others. In a sense this idea is true, but not in the way that most owners understand it. For example, we frequently see German Shepherd or Rottweiler owners who wonder if they should train their dog in German. “I heard they learn better that way,” they often say. Actually, we often have owners who want to train their dog in another language. (It’s often German, but not always.)The answer I give them? “It doesn't matter.” A few days ago I saw a dog trainer joking on Facebook about a client with a Russian dog who said that their commands weren't working because they weren’t speaking to it in Russian. We all had a chuckle about that. But this idea is a reality: many owners think that language makes a difference. It doesn’t. I’ve trained dogs in English, German, Czech, Spanish, Greek, Russi

Today’s article is going to break a few hearts. Every time I talk about the topic I’m about the delve into I feel awful, because I’m destroying someone’s idea about their dog. But I think that it’s crucial for people to understand. The myth I’m going to bust today is the idea that your dogs will protect you. In a real scenario, your dog probably won’t protect you. We do a lot of protection training, teaching dogs to protect a home or car or from muggings, and owners often call us to say things like: “I have a German Shepherd, and I know if push comes to shove he’s going to take care of me. I just want to make sure that he has the training to do it well.” That’s the phrase I hear a lot: that if my dog had to, he would certainly protect me. The overwhelming majority of German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Rottweilers won’t actually protect their owners. Plenty of these dogs will bark at a window or vehicle. They’ll put on a show, but very few will actually engage another human when their own safety is on the li

In this post, I want to offer some words of caution about the concept of management, a term that is often used by dog trainers. All this means is setting up an environment where your dog can have success. We work with a lot of dogs who have aggression problems, and can often do an enormous amount to help these dogs get over their issue. But eventually, we may reach a point where we see a diminishing returns. Let’s say that the dog does very well in situations A, B, and C, but scenario L is something like being on a paved path and seeing another dog charging toward them. Even if the dog does perfectly in so many scenarios where they used to be aggressive, this is completely different. It’s a lot to ask a dog not to be aggressive when another animal is charging at them. That’s a situation where management would be key. What does good management mean? For starters, it means recognizing that the scenario at hand is too much for your dog to handle. In this specific circumstance, you might get off the path ten o

In this post, I’d like to talk a little about crate training benchmarks. Any time that clients are crate training their dog, they always ask me when they don't need to continue using it any more. I always say not to rush it, because the crate is a great tool. I call it “the silent teacher.” It shows a dog how to be calm and relaxed, so that ideally they’re still calm outside the crate. They’ve spent time building up that understanding. The concept easily transfers. But there are certain moments that I look for along the way, benchmarks that tell me I can give the dog a little more freedom. The first freedom I’ll give a dog outside the crate is overnight when we’re sleeping. I’ll never let the dog be loose in the house when I’m out of the house running errands—only when we’re sleeping. Why? Because it’s a very small step. Ideally, the dog’s been sleeping in the crate for months. Once we get to the point where the dog is not sleeping in the crate but isn’t supervised. No one’s training while they’re sleepin

Flooding. No, I’m not speaking about what’s been happening in Louisiana and Texas lately—I’m talking about a psychological term for something that happens when you deal with a lot of stress. If you read my previous blog post about counter-conditioning, I mentioned that it can only get you so far when dealing with a dog’s fear. Maybe the threshold is too big, maybe the dog’s fear is too big, maybe the dog doesn’t have a large enough motivator. It’s not feasible or realistic to use counter-conditioning through the entire process in those cases. However, flooding is often useful where counter-conditioning leaves off. Flooding is a tool that we use to help dogs, sometimes properly and sometimes improperly. It’s essentially saying to the dog: “Here’s something you’re afraid of and you can’t run away from it. What are you going to do?” It’s been called “immersion therapy” as well, and has also been performed with many human subjects over the years. When the mind is confronted with something that’s terrifying o

In this post, I’d like to speak about a little-known dog training strategy: counter-conditioning. I was working with a client today whose dog has a lot of fear-based issues. We always start tackling this problem with obedience and structure, which go to the root of the problem. This dog needs to have a calmer mind, so that’s a big part of what we’re working to develop. Even with only two sessions under our belt, this strategy is really helping. We’ve been mapping out some strategies to use long-term, and I realized these were some great strategies that I should be sharing with you! Essentially, counter-conditioning consists of associating something positive with an area of fear. The early scientists who discovered this philosophy helped a young boy conquer his fear of rabbits. They started by holding the rabbit a certain distance away and allowing the boy to eat his food. Gradually, the rabbit got closer. The boy enjoyed eating, so he associated the rabbit with pleasure and got over his fear. We counter-c

In this post, I’d like to talk a little about how to choose a dog. This is a question I get a lot, especially since we do plenty of service dog training. People hear that labs are good service dogs, so they get a lab. The reality? Not every lab can handle a service dog’s job. Sometimes people do their research and figure out that a German Shepherd is right for their lifestyle, so they go out and get any Shepherd they can find. These owners place too much importance on the breed, because the breed book says that the dog will be a certain way. Now, those breed books have some general things correct, but a lot of things very wrong. All dogs are individuals, so within a hundred German Shepherds you’ll find a huge variety of temperament, character, personality, courage, fear, and so on. So what are you looking for in a new dog? The older the dog is, the more you can tell about its character. We can tell some things about puppies, of course, but not a ton. You want to do your best whether you're rescuing an older