​When I was young, I remember waiting in line at the grocery store behind a mother and her young child – probably between 3-5. The kid, bored from a long trip through Kroger, found a glimmer of hope in his day when he saw the brightly colored candied section at the checkout aisle. The aisle, as they tend to be, was filled with Snickers, Sour Patch Kids, gum, Skittles, and any other mainstream candy you could have imagined.

“Mommy, can I have some candy?” the child asked politely as his tiny hand grabbed for some Peanut Butter cups.

“Not today, honey” the mom responded without even thinking.

And then it began.

The child, sensing his mother’s distraction and lack of conviction to her “no” began to escalate.

“PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!” he said.

“I said not today,” she said.

“BUT I WANT CANDY!!!” he said.

The mom then glanced around the store, feeling the impending doom of a full meltdown, and changed her tune.

“Okay honey. Since you were good in the store.”
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This scene is something we’ve all either been a part of – whether as the parent, the kid, or a bystander thinking about we’re happy we don’t have kids or how much better we would handle the situation if we did have kids ( was the latter before I had kids myself and gained a massive amount of empathy for parents put in that situation). 

I remember back before I knew what I was doing with dogs, I was out walking my dog through my busy neighborhood - I’m being generous by saying “walking,” because it was mostly being pulled, getting frustrated and getting blown off by my dog.

Towards the end of the walk, I was doing so terribly that someone took a minute out of their meal and stepped out of a restaurant just to heckle me. I remember very clearly a man opening the door across the street and yelling:
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“It’s called dog training. You need it.”
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When I was young, I had a boss at work who was helping mentor me to the next level of my career. I was working at a big company with tons of employees and he gave me some life-changing advice – make sure you say hi to everyone when you walk into the room, ask how their day is going, smile at people – the basics of being a good human.

It’s easy when your life is fast-paced and hectic to forget those little drops of positivity that you can give the people and dogs in your life throughout the day.
My boss was more strategic than just being a nice guy, though. He knew that because I was in a leadership position, I needed to build a bank of good will for when I needed to have the more difficult conversations. The way he explained it was that every “hello” or “how are you doing?” was a teensy-tiny deposit in the good will bank and you needed plenty of good will in the account when you go to make a withdrawal.
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Well as dog owners, you too are in a position of leadership and it’s nice for you to know this rule as well. The same rule applies to your dog.
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If you personally are feeling stuck in a rut, or you’re not happy with your life, the best thing I can tell you is that if you change your habits, you will change your life. That simple advice has always worked wonders for me.

Habits are tricky things because good ones are hard to form and bad habits seem to form almost effortlessly. The good news is, once new good habits are formed, they’re hard to break and your life will be changed forever. Just remember, when you started brushing your teeth as a kid you probably hated it and resisted it every step of the way. Today as an adult, hopefully, brushing your teeth is just something you do without thinking about it – with no resistance. I can say with certainty that you are much healthier and better off for conquering your original apprehension.

When it comes to being a good pack leader for your dogs and your family, the same rules apply: If you change your habits with your dog, you will change your dog’s life.
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Here are a few simple habits you can add to your life to make your dog’s life exponentially better:
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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.

Dog trainers, no matter their approach to working with dogs, owe a lot to Cesar Millan. He was one of the first people who showed, in just an hour TV program, that an out of control dog CAN change. Everyday people who were struggling with their dog, or who had accepted that their dog had an unresolvable issue, suddenly saw that anything was possible.

Because of that, there were suddenly loads of people looking to spend money on their own Dog Whisperers to help solve their dog’s problems. The culture shifted from seeing dogs with issues as “bad apples” that weren’t fit for the world, to struggling, living beings in need of help.

However, there’s a flip side to the success of the Dog Whisperer TV show – people became used to seeing dog problems solved in an hour by a dog Superman. This in spite of the fact that there were countless episodes where Cesar got bit, got others bit, the owners ended up failing, or he would take particularly difficult dogs to his Dog Psychology Center (sometimes for months) for a lengthy rehabilitation under the eye of multiple professional trainers in the best facilities on Earth.
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People still watch that program and assume dog trainers are magic - even if Cesar tells them specifically that rehabilitating a dog is not magic. I even recall watching skeptical people on the show waiting to see Cesar fail the way people watch a magician hoping to catch the sleight of hand or that the illusion somehow fails.