"Alpha" and "Pack Leader" theory discarded by the man who invented the term &quo
Thanks to TV (Cesar Millan of Dog Whisperer and Brad Pattison of End of My Leash fame) a lot of average people throw out the term "alpha" and "pack leader" and automatically assume a misbehaving dog is doing so because it thinks its dominant and the leader.Both Cesar and Brad likely read Dr. L .David Mech's 1970 study about wolf packs where the term Alpha was first used.Dr. Mech has gone on record numerous times to say his study was flawed and as he puts it - a lot of learning has happened since 1970 and the theories he put forth in 1970 don't actually hold true.Of course, National Geographic and Slice would rather you not know that, since it discredits t

Karen Pryor Academy Workshop 1 with Steve Benjamin and Casey Lomonaco
Last weekend, Hyedie, Duke, Petey, and I drove down to Endicott, New York for Workshop 1 in the Karen Pryor Academy. What a great experience! The class is small (5 students in total) and it was basically 16 hours of non stop learning. The work we did leading up to the workshop put me on a great learning path of self discovery, and the workshop helped drive things home for me and answer questions there were lingering.Petey performed "Yummo-o" (tongue lick on cue), "Go to Bed", "Get in a Box" and a new trick "Hup" (Jump over my bended knee) like a champ for the class!Here's a video of my work on Get in a Box. I finished shaping the behavior with Petey actually down

Lure-Reward vs Shaping
I've been busy lately! In September I was accepted to the Karen Pryor Academy and I have been working very diligently on the program... I was going to work with Duke through the program, but I've decided to work with Petey instead, so that when we're finished, he'll have skills that will give him the biggest leg up he'll have in life.Karen Pryor wrote the seminal "Don't Shoot the Dog!" back in the mid 80s and is basically the trainer who brought clicker training from the dolphin world to the dog world.Prior to beginning the program I was strictly a lure-reward style positive reinforcement trainer. Karen Pryor's curriculum is all about Free Shaping or Capturing, whi