Feb 18 2009
About This Blog
Welcome to SniffyDog! This blog is meant to give anyone, whether casual hobbyist or serious working-dog trainer, some insights, help, and training tips on teaching a dog to do scent work. Find the missing child? Sure thing. Find the bad guy? We can do that. Find the remote? The slobber is your problem, but the finding, we can do.
The author has four years of experience in search and rescue, five of apprenticeship in positive training methods, plus time spent with Schutzhund, AKC tracking, police, and trick trainers. She has taught the old geezer house dog to sniff out cadaver (a wisdom tooth, mostly, if you were worried about the neighborhood) just for fun and is currently working on a tracking title for the show dog. Her students have made real-world finds in addition to doing well in training exercises. She has lived with dogs all her life, but prefers to be a lady by not saying how long that’s been. She is always interested in new ways of doing things, but will question the heck out of them when they’re presented.
The central premise of this blog is that a hard dog does not necessarily need a harder trainer with a heavy hand. If you really, really believe that because your dog has a high pain threshold you need to hit harder to train him, and you absolutely cannot be bothered to try something else, go elsewhere. I don’t have enough hours in the day to argue with you. I tried your way back when nobody around me knew of any others, and produced, oh, a quarter the results I’m getting with the positive training. If you won’t try it, you’ll never see the difference.
Hi! I saw your post on the Bark web site about plastic shipping crates being the safest for car travel with dogs. Do you mean the regular plastic vari-kennel type crates? Or a heavier animal shipping crate?
Thanks!
JoAnna
Oh, hooray! Someone followed me back from the Bark! I have the vari-kennels, myself, and think that’s probably what most people are using. A friend of mine had her car pancaked between two campers with her dogs in those, and though the crates were damaged, they took all the flak and the dogs were fine.
I would have doubts about the effectiveness of the ones that are ALL plastic, though. If it comes apart too easily, the crumple zone concept is ruined.
Have you done the collar-lift Out? The collar goes right behind the jaw before you lift and puts forward pressure on the jaw — it’s not a choke. If you’ve ever seen someone hauling the dog all over the place by the middle of the neck and bragging on how tough his dog is, he’s doing it wrong. It’s good for emergency removal of dangerous or precious objects from the jaws, and when paired with the command tends to get you a good “Out” after a few repeats.
Chase, eh? Dustin’s Schutzhundy brother is a Chase too.