Ty The Dog Guy On The Daily

In a previous post I spoke a bit about my family vacation in Flathead Lake, Montana. We stayed in a beautiful house with a little dock and an orchard. This morning I sat on the dock being very quiet, trying to blend into the background, and watching the deer in the orchard and the birds diving into the water. This beautiful setting is the scene for a story that made me laugh, and which I’d like to relate to you here. Yesterday, my family was hanging out in the house and my wife suggested that we go down to swim at the dock. It was our first full day of vacation, so no one knew if the water was cold, warm, or somewhere in the pleasant middle. I had to finish an email and get changed, so I told them I’d be down in ten minutes. I also had a massive, raging headache, so I popped a few aspirin. Ten minutes later I walked down the steps and walked over to the water to see all four of my kids sitting on the dock with their towels, huddling and shivering. They said to me, “Dad, get in the water. It’s amazing, it’s

This past week, I was out on a morning walk while on vacation in Flathead Lake in Montana, which is an absolutely stunning area. On morning walks you can see deer and birds diving into the water to catch fish, and our lakefront house had a beautiful dock. Yesterday on a hike we saw some bighorn sheep. I’m caught by how gorgeous and amazing this place is. As I’ve chatted with the people who live in this area, I get the sense that after a while it ceases to be novel. For me, the beauty of this place is novel. I love being on or close to the water, but for some reason I live in Utah—where even getting to water means packing lunch and taking a long drive. For the thousands of people who live around Flathead Lake (which is in Glacier National Park, just south of the Canadian border), being on the water isn’t anything special. They live there! And while they love and enjoy their home, as time goes on the novelty wears off. There was a time years ago when I worked for a dog training company and the novelty of dog

I want to talk about playing with your dog, a topic that I encountered several times just this week. Earlier today, I had a conversation with a client who’s getting a very good working dog from a Midwest breeder. The breeder called me to say, “I understand that you're going to be doing some of the training for this dog, and I’d just like to talk about your methods.” We had a forty-five minute conversation, and when all was said and done I realized that about twenty minutes of that was spent talking about play. I also have a nice working dog who’s doing a test run at a client’s home this weekend. I wasn’t going to be there when the client was going to pick up the dog, so I made a video to impart some information to them. Most of that information, I noticed, was about play. My family is going on vacation. I was making a video for my brother-in-law, who’s going to be staying with my dog, and a big part of those instructions were about play. All of these events made me realize the importance of play. I’ve known

My last post on this topic had to do with the general idea of the “system” and the four essential elements of puppy training. (If you didn’t catch that post, then go back and read it first.) As time goes on, I’ll be putting out more of these systems articles. Today I want to talk about a system that probably affects you: house training your dog. This is a tough topic, and it’s not just one that affects puppy owners. I was speaking this morning with the owner of a two-year-old German Shepherd who still wasn't house trained, and I talk to people with four-year-old Shi Tzus and six-year old Chihuahuas who aren’t house trained. It’s obviously a difficult process—so why not use a system? Why try to reinvent the wheel and come up with your own strategy when you could opt for a system that has been proven to work, time and time again? My house training system has been used thousands of times, both with my own personal clients and with the people who use my DVDs and books. I know that this system always works quickl

Recently it’s become very popular for owners to put their dogs to work. I’m all in favor of this and believe it’s a wonderful way to help focus your dog, but it’s also something that has been greatly misunderstood in many different ways. I’d like to use this post to clear up some of those misunderstandings. Before we dive into this topic, let me first define what I mean by a “job.” Many owners come to me saying that they have a Border Collie or a German Shepherd who needs to have a job. I think this started with Cesar Milan, who’s big on teaching dogs to work. Since then, other popular dog trainers have brought this concept further into the cultural vernacular. I think that this concept is wonderful in theory, and that we should always look for opportunities to make it a reality. However, I think that owners often get confused because they want to give their dog a job instead of training it. It’s not uncommon for me to get a phone call from an owner who has a Border Collie or an Australian Shepherd or ano

In this post I want to talk about how to have your dog greet other dogs and people, whether they’re on- or off-leash. This is a question that I hear a lot from clients here in Utah, who like to go out on the trails. Over the years I’ve developed a formula over the years to facilitate this situation, and encapsulate that formula into one single, solitary word. Cool, right? In theory, it’s very easy too. What’s the word? “Don’t!” I know, maybe you were waiting for that. But my answer is always the same: don’t let your dog meet other dogs on a trail walk, on- or off-leash. This might sound a little extreme, like I don't want your dog to have fun. Now, I’ll admit that I might be a little more conservative on this topic than some other trainers might be. But that’s purely because I’ve witnessed and heard about so many nightmares that I don’t see any reason for allowing your dog to do this. Let’s devote some time to figuring out why this situation so frequently turns into a problem. Dogs are social creatures,

Today I want to give you some harsh words about a phenomenon that I see a lot. In fact, two separate examples of this issue had already surfaced by ten o’clock this morning! Here’s what I want to tell you: no matter what your parents told you when you were a kid, there is no magical farm where dogs with problems go to live out the rest of their days, jumping through the grass and playing in streams and chasing butterflies through a meadow. That place doesn't exist. I know a lot of parents tell their kids that it exists when Rusty goes off to be put down, but it’s not real. Why is this on my mind today? Because, as I mentioned before, two instances of it popped up today. The first was someone who emailed me to ask me to place their dog for them. The second was a man on Facebook who posted something along the lines of: “I have a dog who’s been fighting my other dog. She killed a skunk and a chicken, and I really need to get rid of her. Is there someplace that will take her?” Essentially, these people wanted

It’s come to my attention in recent years that very few people really comprehend the differences between service dogs, therapy dogs, and emotional support dogs. I have other videos and materials on my website that contain this information, but I didn’t have one piece of content that simply outlined the difference. Since this is a question I answer so much at work, I thought I’d tackle the subject here as well! There are a few differences and legal distinctions between these three kinds of dogs, which is why it’s important to get them straight. People often interchange these words without actually understanding what they mean: they might say “therapy dog” when they mean “service dog,” or “service dog” when they mean “emotional support dog.” So if you’re looking into owning one of these animals, it’s imperative that you clearly understand those differences. A service dog has been trained to provide at least one service that mitigates a disability. Basically, they help people with disabilities live their lives

In my work, I frequently field questions like: “When can I stop using the dog crate?” or “At what point do I not need to use the leash?” or “Can I stop using this e-collar yet?” I understand the thought process behind this questions. Training a dog isn't necessarily easy, and there is a lot of work and time involved. Cutting up treats, putting on the training collar, and handling the leash can be a bit of a hassle, and they’re outside of how we would like to live with our dogs. Let’s face it: most people would love to just go on walks, cuddle, and laugh at their dog’s funny quirks. They want their dog’s companionship, and using the crate and leash all the time can feel like a distraction from that. I totally understand this mindset. Sometimes we want to jump to the point where the dog is trained and we can relax in “maintenance mode.” We just want happy, fun coexistence with our pals! But I’m always trying to help owners understand that they shouldn't jump the gun. That’s one of the biggest problems I see:

Today I want to talk about a topic that’s a little personal: choosing to do more than you need to do when you’re training your dog. My first dog’s name was Heidi, and it took me years of begging to get her. My parents weren’t into them, my mom was afraid of them, and nobody else wanted to deal with the mess. But I begged until I was fourteen years old and we moved to a house that had an acre of property, and then along came Heidi! Around the same time that Heidi came to live with us, I was able to start my apprenticeship with a local dog trainer in Northern California. So I got into dog training very quickly as a kid. I was addicted to how cool it was to work as a team, to get my dog to listen to me, and to have such a strong bond with an animal. I thought it was amazing. I was so gung-ho when first learning to train that I did a lot of crazy things. As an example, I often worked on a sit stay on a picnic table at a park. There’s absolutely no reason for a dog to jump up on a picnic table, but I did it

In upcoming weeks, I’m going to devote a handful of posts to a topic that’s very important to me: systems. What I’m talking about when I use the word “system” is any process that we go through to achieve a desired result. Nearly every profession has its own set of systems. When you go to a restaurant to get a hamburger—whether it’s a McDonald’s or a high-end burger joint—there will be a system with which they take our order, send it to the kitchen, and cook it. That’s the case when you’re building a car, or getting a home loan. There is always a system to make things happen smoothly and properly. For some reason, however, dog owners often don’t apply this principle when training their dogs. Instead, they get stuck constantly playing catch-up. As soon as their dog starts to do something undesirable, they immediately start wondering what they should do about it. They spend very little time thinking about a systematic approach in order to solve problems. For this reason, an overwhelming number of dog trainer

In this post, I’d like to talk about the speed with which you train your dog. This morning I was working with a client whose dog is learning some service dog work in public. The dog is young—only about seven months—so she isn't fully ready to take on her job just yet. She’s been coming in for about a month, and today her owners saw her working for the first time since she started training. Their comment? “I can’t believe how different she is in just a month!” For an exercise, we took the dog went into a giant, very busy thrift store that was full of all sorts of distractions: tons of people, weird smells, slippery floors. It was one of the dog’s first times being handled by her new owner. All these things (young dog, new handler, distracting setting) would typically converge against you in your efforts to have a well-trained and obedient dog, but she did phenomenally well! There were areas that could be improved, of course, but the owner thought she was great. This incident reminded me that balanced or st

Today I’d like to address a difficult question that I’ve had many times over the years: high-energy dogs who have been injured and need to be off their feet for an extended period of time. Sometimes this situation is very simple—as is the case when a dog is neutered or spayed—and generally require a short four or five day recovery. Most people can manage to power through that. The strategies I’ll describe now can apply to those situations, but I’m speaking more toward people whose dogs have had an invasive surgery, broken a leg, or torn a muscle—injuries that require several weeks of “down time.” When your dog needs down time but doesn't want to have it, there are two things I usually recommend. The first is mental activity. Most of the mental exercises I usually recommend revolve around food or toys, but if your dog needs to be resting it can be tough to employ a toy. You can, however, do a lot of things with food that engage the mind but don’t do much with the body. It’s especially effective to utiliz

Have you ever thought about how pressure and stress can benefit your dog? As humans, we tend to label “stress” a four-letter-word. But if you really think about it, there is no such thing as growth in the living world without it! The plant that springs out of the earth has to push forward through difficulty to get itself out of the soil, fight for resources like air and water and sunlight. In pushing through those stresses, it survives. If it cannot cope or adapt to the pressures that its environment gives it, then it will die. You can look at any creature in the animal kingdom—chipmunks and killer whales and everything in between—and see the same pattern. Growth can only be seen after pressure and stress do their work, because the natural world never just hands you growth. We humans like to think of ourselves as far more civilized, but the same is true for us: there is no such thing as growth without stress. When a kid feels the pressure to succeed, she might go to college and work hard there. Perhaps sh

In front of me right now I have four cheap, simple bracelets, and I want to tell you the story of how I received them. When I was at work today—and very busy—a young woman walked in, came over to the desk, and started talking to me. To be honest, I didn't understand much of what she said, but I did gather that she was from Thailand and that she’d only been in the country for a week. She opened up a binder, and inside there were bracelets, necklaces, and other kinds of jewelry. She had a laminated paper with her that explained the story of the pieces, but frankly I was too busy to really listen to what she was saying. The main thing I gathered is that she was from Thailand and was raising some money, and that she had jewelry for sale. At first I was tempted to tell her I didn't have time, but I was immediately struck by this young woman’s work ethic. How many of today’s eighteen year old Americans would ever go cold-calling to businesses attempting to sell trinkets? You’d need to twist some arms—maybe even t

In my community there’s a hillside covered in dead, brown grass. There are a few shades of green on the hill, but they’re only there because of the community’s efforts to water this dead hill. I live directly across the street, and every time our guests see the sprinklers come on in the evening, they get confused. “Why waste so much water?” they ask. “Why water a dead hill?” Well, why does the community do this? Because if they didn’t, then there would be no green on the hill whatsoever. All of the grass would be completely dead—and would immediately turn into a tinderbox. Just over that hill are thousands of homes, where tens of thousands of people live. If this hillside were to catch fire, it could potentially harm many people and destroy lots of homes. The community takes various measures to prevent this from ever happening, such as routinely cutting the grass and watering even the dead patches. That hillside, without the maintenance it receives, could quickly destroy many acres and lives. However, the co

Today I want to make a distinction between intelligence and drive. These are two very different concepts, but they are often confused with each other to a certain degree. People often have incorrect expectations for their dogs based on this misunderstanding. About eight years ago I was invited to do a demonstration with my dog, Rocco. He was a great protection dog, and I was asked by a rescue dog event to come and show off his protection abilities. I had a client put on a big bite suit and let Rocco attack him. It was a lot of fun, and was witnessed by thousands of people. After the event, people came up to me and emailed me to say things like “I’d really like for my dog to be able to do that too.” Unfortunately I never worked with any of those dogs, because none of them were actually capable. Time and time again, they also added that their dog was very intelligent. A man approached me after the event and said that he was sure his dog could do the same things that Rocco had. My question for him was, “Okay,

Today I’d like to share a phrase that I use quite a lot with my clients: “The more proactive your dog is in fixing their mistake, the sooner they won’t make that mistake.” Let me bring in an example to illustrate this concept: leash pulling. We work on this problem a lot with clients, because nearly every dog I meet for the first time is pulling on his leash. We teach a method called “the Crazy Man Method.” When we’re walking and the dog moves too far ahead, I do a 180-degree turn and give a little tug on the leash. If the dog goes right, I go left. If the dog goes left, I go right. If the dog goes forward, I go backward. After a while, the dog realizes “I’ve got to watch out for this guy, he’s crazy! If I go this way, he goes that way. He’s nuts!” Soon he realizes that if he stays put, then he can pay attention. The Crazy Man Method is great, and it gets most dogs eighty percent of the way to obedience. But there are some dogs who still nudge forward a little bit as they’re walking, even after doing this m

In this post, I’d like to write a little about the present tense verb. No, I’m not talking about English class! What I would like to speak about is a misconception I have noticed among dog owners. They’ll say things like: “I come home and I know that my dog pooped on the floor. He knows that it’s wrong because he hangs his head and walks around the house.” Or: “He keeps doing this even though he’s learned better. Why?” At its core, this is a present tense verb problem. See, your ability to form either a positive or a negative association with your dog can only occur in the present tense. If I ask my dog to sit and he sits, I can feed him a treat, tell him “good job,” or give him a pat on the head. In the moment I can tell him he did well, and he can learn that sitting on command is a good thing. If I catch him sitting ten minutes later and I praise him again, the present tense verb is still “he sits.” In that case, I’m not praising him for the act of putting his rear on the ground, but for the act of stayi

Today I want to write a little about the sum of your friends. There’s a statement on this topic that I’ve heard many times over the years, almost always from motivational speakers and others of that variety. Now, I know that sometimes motivational speakers are just trying to sell a book or a course, so I don’t know if the statement is completely accurate. Obviously you can’t speak in absolutes, but I believe this is the truth in most cases. I’ll paraphrase the statement here: “In life, your income will be proportionate to the average of the five people you hang out with most.” What does that mean? Basically, that if your five best friends earn $30,000 a year, you’ll probably make the same amount. If the five people you choose to hang out with the most are making $500,000 a year, however, you will probably land somewhere around that yourself. The reasoning behind this—which is probably more anecdotal than anything—is that when you hang out with the same type of person over and over, they tend to make certa