Welcome to Loose Leashes Dog Training

This is probably one of the most important posts I’ve ever done. There is the crisis going on right now in the dog world with balance training (which is what I do) vs positive reinforcement- force free training. There are people out there, trying to make other people believe that force free training and positive reinforcement training works to stop unwanted behaviors. There are trainers out there giving people, false hope and false information about how to train dogs using nothing but high-value treats. As great as that might sound on paper it does not work. And I know for a fact that it does not work, because all of those people have been to those types of trainers, and then came to me as a last resort when it’s failed, or those dogs end up being surrendered to the rescue that I work with- all saying the same thing—- “I’ve tried everything!” Unfortunately dogs that don’t care about food when they are fearful or aggressive do not benefit from this type of training, and redirecting a dog with food or praise does not work for truly aggressive, or reactive dogs or dogs that have zero food, praise, or toy drive when they are in an ugly state of mind. When food appears it’s a reward. Let’s face it. When you take food out your dog knows it’s doing something good. So when your dog is doing something bad and food appears, you are teaching it that it is doing something good regardless of what you think that you were doing. Trust me. I love dogs more than anybody in this whole entire world, and I would love for it to work. I would love to stop leash reactive dogs with food, I would love to be able to help fearful dogs with food, and I would love to stop bad behaviors using really good treats, hugs and kisses. That’s just not how it works. Not all dogs want food and not all dogs want love and affection. If you want a behavior to stop, something negative has to happen. Not a time out where the dog has no idea why it’s in time out. A one second, properly applied punisher. A non emotional correction. If I were speeding, and a police over told me very nicely to please not speed again, I am still going to speed. If a police officer pulled me over and gave me a five dollar speeding ticket I’m still going to speed. If a police officer pulled me over and gave me a $300 speeding ticket I would stop speeding because the consequence has become valuable. This is how the world works. We learn that behaviors are wrong due to the consequences that we get from doing them. Once we make positive choices we can get rewards. I know I can’t change the world and I can’t change the people who already drank the Kool-Aid, but every week I work with 10 to 15 dogs and I change their lives for the better. I train dogs to behave in highly distractive environments and not just inside their homes. I help dogs to make better choices and teach humans how to actually “love” their dog in a way that makes the dogs happy. The world is filled with very neurotic dogs right now. Dogs can’t sit still, dogs are on edge all the time. Dogs react over every single thing. I truly believe that the Internet is to blame because everybody does their research that way and this FORCE FREE nonsense is ruining dogs. I can tell you first hand, after working with thousands of dogs that balanced training works. Hope this video helps you to understand the difference.