Most dog people I meet want their dogs to be happy and successful. I usually focus on that and try to avoid the seedy underbelly of dog politics, but not presenting you dog lovers out there with the facts is going to end up being detrimental to the dogs we care about so I must speak a little bit about what is happening in governments across the world and now here in the US.

Recently in Toronto, a new rule was snuck into the by-laws of the city of Toronto, Canada. The city decided to ban the use of prong collars and slip chains (often referred to as choke chains). Luckily, thanks to the tireless work of organizations like the International Association of Canine Professionals the rule has been temporarily repealed while they gather more information.
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Worse yet, in Hillsborough County and the state of Florida, a powerful lobby is pushing legislation that basically mandates an “all-positive” approach in dog training.

​There is a growing movement of a loud minority of trainers and animal rights activists who are well-intentioned, but misinformed about the benefits and drawbacks of such “aversive” tools and if the rest of us remain quiet, then we’ve got a dire situation for all the dogs we care about on our hands.
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One of the most underrated tools in self-improvement or dog improvement is that of visualization.

My first exposure to visualization came when I was a young man playing basketball and my father was my coach at the time. He must have read some article about visualization saying how great athletes were using visualization techniques to improve, because I clearly remember him telling me that if I couldn’t get to a basketball hoop, I should practice shooting free-throws in my head. That I should imagine setting myself at the free throw line, taking a couple of practice dribbles while looking at the hoop, and then going through the motion of what a perfect free throw looked like in my head.

Being a typical pre-teen, I blew him off and told him he sounded like a crazy person.

As with much of my dad’s advice that I thought was stupid at the time, I have to tell him now as an adult that he was right about a lot more than I gave him credit for.
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Part of what makes an excellent pack leader or dog trainer is the ability to stay on an even keel. That skill comes from a combination of a lot of experience and practice, but also the ability to effectively visualize what success looks like.

Growing up as a wrestler and participating in sports in general, I could always get a sense for who the coaches didn’t really believe in as athletes. It wasn’t a lack of attention to these kids that gave it away. It wasn’t even a lack of friendliness or positive attention. They were always good guys and always treated us well.

Surprisingly, you could tell the coach’s favorite by who they rode the most in practice. Who they singled out for extra sprints, or extra rounds. A coach’s favorite was the one who had to run until he puked while the other kids stood around the side of the room glad they weren’t called out.

You could really tell a coach cared when an athlete had a poor performance and the coach was genuinely disappointed. There was no “good try” or “A for effort!” Just genuine disappointment.

I see this every day in the real world, too. If you’re someone who works and cares about your professional growth, you’re lucky if you have a boss, mentor, or superior who pulls you into his office and takes the time to tell you everything you’re doing wrong and how you can get better so you can contribute more and hopefully move successfully to the next phase of your life.

On the flip side, you probably feel a little empty if you have a boss who is either just annoying or worse – they don’t really say much about what you do - good or bad - and you just feel like you could disappear and no one would notice your work is not being done.
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When I look at a lot of clients and their dogs, I think about this crushing weight of low expectations.
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One of my best clients recently posted a viral video where a dog, seemingly out of nowhere, bites a toddler who was crawling all over her. Be warned, it’s a disturbing video, but watch how it happens here:

On the Internet, everyone is an expert at everything, so the comments are even more vicious than the video itself. The responses all fall into a few of these categories:
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1)      Destroy the dog

2)      It’s not the dog’s fault at all and the parents shouldn’t be allowed to have kids or a dog.

3)      It is so obvious that the dog was going to bite the child

4)      The dog was obviously punished for growling and that’s why he went straight to biting.

I will answer these claims quickly and then move on to the bigger issue:

1)      Probably not. While the video looks horrific, the more I watched it, the gentler the bite looked. If there was significant damage, this may be the right call. However, because the dog escalates so quickly, it’s probably not a good fit for an inexperienced home with kids.

2)      Dog lovers are so quick to pardon dogs of all wrong doing. There needs to be more accountability for dogs. The dog could have gotten up and walked away. It could have growled. It had any number of choices to make and made a bad, yet natural one. We need to advocate for our dogs always, but also to hold them accountable.

3)      One can easily see the dog was going to bite if one already knows the result. The dog stiffened and whale eyed a bit. However, reasonable people would not necessarily assume that would escalate to a horror movie-like bite.

4)      This is a theoretical concept that floats around the Internet, but is not necessarily grounded in facts. I doubt this dog experienced a great amount of punishment for growling in the past, but that is just speculation.

What’s more interesting to me is the societal epidemic we have of misunderstanding what dogs are: at the end of the day they are still animals that carry dangerous weapons in their mouths. We have a historical co-evolution with them, but over the last 50 years dogs have entered a bizarre transition from dog to child replacers and “members of the family” that has caused some growing pains like the situation we watched happen in this video - the dog corrected the baby the same way she would her own puppy or a sibling.
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People present dogs one way:
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​Then the same people get angry when new dog owners mistake their own dogs for cuddly, live-action teddy bears that their child can crawl all over.

If you choose to bring a dog into your home, it’s important you understand dogs to some extent – not just that you can read a dog’s body language and correct it before things go wrong, but sometimes, despite your best efforts, things can go wrong and dogs will react the way animals do.

As a society, the best change we can make is to start letting dogs be dogs again. That means less cute outfits and more exercise. Less having your toddler play with your dog and more training your dog with your toddler. That also means if you put your dog in a situation to make a mistake, you understand that even the best dog can make a mistake.
And yes, as I like to say, your dog probably needs more direction and less affection.

Dogs are and should always be members of our human pack. But that pack will only function smoothly when we let the dogs be dogs and humans be humans while still always working together.

 Right now, we have the big picture wrong and dogs are getting a bad deal in our society – being forced to play roles they weren’t born to play, not getting the direction they need, and not getting to enjoy the freedom every being craves.
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We owe it to dogs, and our human babies, to be better.

*Please like, share, and comment if you find this helpful / informative.
Follow Andrew on Twitter: @drewwarner
Like me on Facebook: facebook.com/andrewwarnerdogtraining
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The last few years have been the years of change for me and my wife. We've moved, added a few kids to the household, have launched and expanded this business, and more
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In the previous version of our life, there was considerably more sleep and a lot more freedom (what did we do with all of that time!?) - but with all that freedom, it would have been easier to let things like routine and discipline slip through our fingers. Had we gone that route, our now more crowded life wou...ld be that much more difficult to handle today.
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Now that our family walks look like a mixed-species military walking through Irvington, I'm glad all the work we put in with our own dogs is paying off - each one has gone from absolutely terrible to a functioning member of a group that is bigger than themselves.

This week here in Indianapolis we had a doozy of a storm. My dogs don’t care a bit about storms, but my wife certainly gets worked up about all the lightning, thunder and high winds that seem like they’re going to rip your house off its foundation.

Many dogs out there have storm phobia far worse than even my wife does. They might hyperventilate, pace, whine anxiously, or even get destructive. If that’s the case and a storm is coming, take a few steps to help ease your dog’s anxiety
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And if you have a young dog who isn’t bothered by storms, not so fast – you’re not out of the woods yet! Storm phobia is often a phobia that is born later in a dog’s life – sometimes not showing up until they are 4 years of age or older. So you might want to pay attention too.
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Here are 4 drug-free ways to ease your dog’s storm anxiety: ​