“Over the last two decades, dog training has undergone tremendous change. Today’s obedience consumer wants to know more than just how to teach the dog to sit, down, and stay. Average pet owners not only want their dogs to sit, they want to know how to prevent and fix behavior problems, and why their dogs behave as they do. Most contemporary pet owners also have an idea of how they wish to accomplish this training. The average pet owner is much more educated than in years past and therefore demands that the trainer explain and defend why and how a training method works. The modern pet owner is looking for positive educational methods rather than the forced training so popular twenty years ago. In order to keep up with the demand from the general public for the newer training methods, trainers have sought higher education about canine behavior through classes, seminars, and books that address the behavior of the domestic dog. The successful instructor must now understand more than the mechanical aspects of training; her or she must demonstrate a conceptual understanding of canine behavior, learning, and problem solving and communicate that information clearly to the pet owner. As a trainer for general public for the last thirty years, my own class material has gone through a drastic evolution. When I first started teaching, my classes were described as obedience classes, and my class material, like that of all the other trainers in my area, consisted only of come, sit, down, heel, and stay. Over the years, by demand of he pet owner, the focus of the class has become behavior. Instead of being an obedience class, the class is now a behavioral course that teaches obedience to channel behavior. Similarly, the material in this video is for trainers who wish to give their clients more than just an obedience class and for pet owners who want to go beyond basic obedience training. Lay people can easily grasp and apply the learning theories and problem-solving methods presented, and professional trainers will find valuable information to incorporate in their own training programs. They also will be able to extrapolate from the concepts fresh ideas for working out behavior problems and teaching more complex tasks. The trainer who understands motivation, successive approximation, reinforcement versus punishment, reinforcement schedules, and the difference between a bribery and reward system can effectively teach a dog to complete any task, whether for basic control or for a precision performance in a competition trial.

Once the basic theories of canine learning and behavior are mastered, all readers of the book and viewers of this video can creatively use them to train and happily live with any age, size, or temperament of the domestic dog.”