Some dog trainers might say my dog isn’t perfect. She doesn’t always come when called. She can sometimes take a little too long to sit when I ask. She pulls on her leash on walks. But for all of her imperfections, she is perfectly Tiramisu – the dog I trained and love. Maybe “perfect” isn’t really what I wanted in a dog at all.

There is much to consider about dogs. And we have been considering them for centuries. For all of our logic and reason, we have been very wrong about dogs on some pretty basic levels. As we continue to learn about dogs, our beliefs about them have to change too. They cannot be what we want them to be because we reason it so. They are who they are.

Having recently returned from our 2 week road trip with our dogs, here are a few thoughts on how we handle things with our dogs while we are on the road. All of the preparation and training helps, but you have to plan accordingly and make sure you take care of your dogs along the way!

When I travel, I like to have my dogs come along. It’s important to give your dogs the things they need to be successful travelling companions. Training at home and getting them used to the things they may encounter on the road can go a long way toward making your journey a happy and trouble-free one!

There are thousands of dog trainers out there working with dogs. But there are also scientists hard at work discovering more about canine genetics, biology, behaviour, and cognition. What a wonderful thing it is when you can bring both of those worlds together. Imagine what we can learn!

Our dogs learn what we mean by “right” and “wrong” because we teach them our signals. But could we be teaching them more than we realize? Maybe we could be using more signals to improve our communication and our lives with our dogs.

Our dogs will sometimes get it wrong when we are training with them. How we deal with those mistakes determines not only how fast they learn the behaviour but also their attitude about working with us. Should we focus on getting the results we want or helping our dog get it right?

Dog trainers have learned that rewarding the behaviours you want can be a wonderfully effective way to train. Understanding the mechanics of how that reward system affects your dog’s learning can be a big help!

Training a dog is not as simple as it used to be. The current debates raging in the dog world show that quite clearly. Is it more important to be right than to help the dogs? Some trainers seem to think so.

One of the great joys of dogs is their silly nature. Shouldn’t we encourage that side of our dogs rather than saying “No!” when they get a little goofy? There’s nothing quite as much fun as being silly with our dogs. And we can do it safely.