After making our change to positive training, my wife and I decided on a new motto for ourselves. “Each dog better than the last.” Before we moved to training our dogs with behavioural science and positive methods, our approach consisted mostly of trying to keep unwanted behaviours in check and get a standard set of behaviours in place. We didn’t really have much more of a goal that just a dog that didn’t disrupt things too much and provided us good companionship.

Dogs live on farms, in high rise apartments, suburban homes, and even on the road with their humans. We love our dogs in all of their various shapes and sizes. But can we love them wrong? Can we love them too much? It’s an interesting question. Maybe we can love them to death, literally.

It’s fun to explore things in depth and see where they come from, where they go, and even if we can be better or smarter about them. I tend to be scientific in my approach to most things. I like to break them down, see how they work, and be able to put them back together again. But I recognize that not everyone shares my systematic approach to dogs and dog training. So why is “science” considered a bad thing by so many dog trainers? Just a thing that makes me go “hmmm” I guess.