Annie & her dog, Amos.
Listen to the Podcast on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Need help listening? Click here for instructions!
Have a question you'd like answered on the podcast? Visit AnnieGrossman.com/Ask or leave a voicemail at 917-414-2625.
Zak George, one of the most influential dog trainers of the 21st century, has been using his large virtual platform to bring attention to the problematic methods being used by the Internet-famous dog trainer known as Dog Daddy. Zak and Annie discuss the origins of this work, his efforts to get his followers to picket Dog Daddy's events, and more.
Annie also talks about why the conversation about whether or not it is advisable to use force in dog training feels especially important right now.
Subscribe: iTunes
A trainer who goes by the name "Dog Daddy" has millions followers and has recently incited arguments on social media: His critics accuse him of harming dogs and calling it training; his fans accuse his detractors of being sissies who can’t face reality. These two vociferous groups are facing off online and at his in-person events around the world.
Annie puts the saga into the context of a larger (and longer) story about the use of force and coercion in dog training, and gives a nuanced explanation of what defines "balanced" training and what defines trainers that takes a "LIMA" approach. She also investigates Dog Daddy’s background and unconvers some surprising information about how he initially positioned himself to potential clients.
PLUS: The podcast has a new jingle, to go with its... new name!
Subscribe: iTunes
Annie was recently browsing her local dog Facebook group, when she came across a post by a woman named Michaelle who was reaching out for training help with her reactive foster dog. Several of the replies recommended a trainer in the area who was not professionally certified, and Michaelle posted that she had decided to work with. When Annie, perhaps a little too aggressively, responded with critical questions about this trainer, Michaelle called her out on it. By way of apology, Annie offered to coach her through some of the issues she was dealing with, gratis.
They discuss her foster dog Baozi's reactivity in the home, including his, growling, barking, sometimes sudden biting and lunging, his many triggers, and health issues that may be affecting his behavior. Rather than focusing on quick fixes for these unwanted behaviors, Annie approaches the issue by suggesting ways to get to the root cause for lasting and mutually beneficial behavior change.
Note: School For The Dogs Podcast is going on hiatus for a few months!
Subscribe: iTunes
Texas-based trainer Beth Berkobien has a master's degree in animal behavior, specializes in dog aggression, and offers virtual training sessions internationally. She was raised on a farm with field-trial Labradors and grew up around punishment-based dog training using aversives. After being encouraged by a trainer to use an e-collar on her dog that caused him to completely shut down, she moved away from aversives. Many years later, she works primarily with rehabilitating rescue dogs.
She joins Annie on this episode to discuss her journey as a dog trainer. Together they also listen to “bonker”-based dog trainer Jeff Gellman’s rant on dog trainers who prefer to use methods that don’t cause their dogs (and potentially others) additional harm. They also discuss an apparent societal tendency to blame people for their failures, and of balanced trainers to blame clients when their training protocols are ineffective.
Annie finishes by reading some extreme training methods from a dog training book from the 1970's: The Koehler Method of Dog Training by William Koehler.
Subscribe: iTunes
Anamarie Johnson, a former School For The Dogs trainer and current PhD candidate in Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology at Arizona State University, returns to the podcast to discuss her research on language used by dog trainers on their websites. In addition to discussing some of her findings (like what it means when a trainer talks about "nature" and some of the stranger New Age-y language used by aversive and R+ trainers alike), they talk about what's she's learned from working in shelters and more.
Sign up for Anamarie's free presentation about her paper, August 8th at 3PM ET: http://schoolforthedogs.com/words
Subscribe: iTunes
Hang out with any Positive Reinforcement dog trainer and they're bound to have a shirt in their wardrobe from the online store Woof Cultr: An apparel company that has a very niche market: Force-free trainers. Woof Cultr is the brainchild of Mandy Boutelle, who originally left a career as a hairstylist to become a certified dog walker in San Francisco. When she started doing off-leash group dog walks, she knew she had to learn more about dog training and behavior in order to manage her rowdy young pack. This led her to decide to become a dog trainer. At the start of the pandemic, however, she and her husband decided to move to Oregon and to spread the gospel of positive reinforcement dog training in a unique way: By printing bold-but-simple statements about training and behavior on t-shirts.
Subscribe: iTunes
Sara Caron had a leash-reactive dog, and as she started to research a quick fix for the problem, she threw out a wide net and tried lots of things. With guidance from this podcast, she began to see a way of dog training that made sense to her. When felt she had reached a plateau in her own solo study of animal behavior, she enrolled in the School For The Dogs Professional Course last year. She got another puppy shortly before starting the course which allowed her to see some remarkable differences in a dog raised with science-based/reward-based training methods versus one who was not. In this episode, Sara and Annie discuss some of the parts that have made the School For The Dogs Professional Course a life-changing experience for its graduates: The individualized attention, access to the SFTD community of trainers, classes, in-depth material, and the guest speakers. They also discuss the process of finding one’s place in the professional world of dog training.
Apply to the Professional Course here. Applications for the next cohort are due June 30. Cohort begins Aug. 30. Want to learn more? Book a free consult.
Subscribe: iTunes
Leeyah Wiseman is a recent graduate of School For The Dogs Professional Course. If you follow us on TikTok or Instagram, you probably know her from the videos she does for SFTD. While she never thought of herself as a "dog person," she ended up adopting a puppy, George, and falling in love with him. But then she realized she had an issue on her hands: Separation anxiety. Her work figuring out how to deal with this issue in a way that felt right led her to decide to become a dog trainer. Annie and Leeyah discuss how she worked with her dog to improve his anxiety, what she got out of the Professional Course, and popular notions of what it means to "be" positive.
Learn more about the Professional Course here. Next cohort starts in late August!
Subscribe: iTunes
The term "misfit" originally referred to people who were considered to be not great fit for their surroundings -- an ill fit. I miss fit. At School For The Dogs, we see it as our goal to help dogs -- whenever possible -- exist comfortably in an environment that may not be the best fit for them. New York City certainly isn't the best fit for many individuals of any species, which is perhaps one reason why we have several programs specifically for Misfit dogs. In this episode, Annie talks to two School For The Dogs clients who have been attending a couple of unique types of private sessions: Dog Socialization and Misfits Day School. New York-based dog owners Alyssa and Jen talk about how these sessions have helped them help their "Misfit" dogs.
Learn more about these services here.
NEW: Subscribe to Brainy Box, and you'll get a new enrichment toy and new treats every month. Get 15% off for a limited time. Code in episode! Learn more and sign up here.
Subscribe: iTunes
Everyone is impressed by a dog whose eyes meets a human's gaze with magnet-like intensity on cue. Teaching a dog to "touch" his or her eyes to your eyes is a great exercise to practice no matter what the pooch's training level is. When teaching this attention-based behavior to a dog -- whether you use a word such as "Look" or the dog's name -- Annie suggests focusing on your training mechanics before jumping to setting criteria for your dog. In this episode, she clearly breaks down how to build a stellar "Look" cue from scratch, in just six quick steps, using only sixty tiny treats.
Subscribe: iTunes
