Video Examples for Teachers

Several people have told me that they use some of my videos as examples for their students. On this page I have grouped together the posts I think would be most relevant for teachers and trainers. I will add to the page as a create new posts and movies that fall into this category. Please feel free to link to this page, any posts, or any videos that are helpful to you.

Blog Posts with Videos

Dogs Notice Everything A series of videos showing dogs failing to respond or responding incorrectly to cues for a variety of reasons. Specifically intended as a response to folks who call their dogs “stubborn” or accuse them of “giving me the paw.”

Get Out Of My Face! Teaching an Incompatible Behavior How I taught Clara to perform a default down whenever I bent over, instead of mugging my face.

Lumping it: A Public Service Announcement An example of raising criteria too fast and the effect it has on the dog.

Superstition Ain’t the Way A selection of superstitious behaviors I have accidentally taught my dogs. In some you can actually see the behavior develop.

What You Reinforce is What You Get An example of not holding to criteria, and letting the dog “un-train” the behavior I trained.

Classical Conditioning: Creating a Positive Response to Barking How I classically conditioned Clara to have such a positive response to another dog barking that she never joins in, just reports to me for her goodies.

The Barking Recall Clara’s classically trained response to another dog barking is so strong that she will run from the bottom of the yard into the house to report in whenever it happens.

Summer Learns an Alternative to Being the Fun Police Summer learns to come to me instead of harassing the other dogs when they play.

But How do I Tell My Dog She’s Wrong? A post that features a video with Sue Ailsby and her young dog Syn learning stand with duration and stand for exam. It clearly demonstrates Syn learning from the lack of a click.

The Right Word Work on verbal cue discrimination, using the principles of reduced error learning.

A Little Heavy on the Body English An example where I was trying to test a verbal cue discrimination between the behaviors of going to mat and going to crate. However, when it came to the test, you could see that I am obviously still giving physical cues.

Replacing a Poisoned Cue How I rehabilitated Summer’s poisoned “Stay” cue. The video show her stress signals resulting from the earlier cue and her progress with the new cue which had only positive associations.

Operant Learning Illustrated by Examples Just what it says. A movie demonstrating the four processes (quadrants) of operant learning. A stuffed dog generally stands in when the example includes an aversive.

A Secret for Training Two Dogs Step by step instructions for training multiple dogs, with video examples. The secret is to realize that the harder job belongs to the dog that is “waiting,” not the active dog.

Teaching a Dog to Back Up without Using Body Pressure A brief post and video tutorial on using the method where a dog goes into a channel between objects and you mark when they back out. I made this movie after watching the truly awful methods commonly used for teaching dogs to back up, and because I was unable to find another video demonstrating this particular force free method to jump start shaping backing up.

YouTube Videos (no blog commentary so far)

Negative Reinforcement vs. Positive Reinforcement I show an example of a behavior I taught (long ago) using body pressure and the stressful effects on the dogs, then reteach it with positive reinforcement and show a dramatic difference.

Kongs for Beginners How to introduce food toys to inexperienced dogs by starting off very easy.

Intermediate Kongs Slightly more difficult Kongs.

I hope these are useful. And by the way, I take requests for videos. If it is humane, in my dogs’ and my capabilities, and won’t hurt our training in the long run, I’ll try it. I don’t mind being a bad example if it isn’t too humiliating and if it can help some people.