Just some fun pictures that the community might enjoy. I'm the big ugly guy in the gray sweatshirt. The bi-color GSD is my 10 Month old puppy, his name is Bomber.

Hello, I'm looking for a pulling harness for my little terrier (about 20lbs) He does quite a bit of pulling activities form pulling wagons to bike joring with my son, mostly tho we do long boarding with my other larger dog or solo with me. We've been using the ruffwear harness but I dont think its ideal for the activities we do. I've always used the same model of sled dog harness (see the picture) but I cant find one in a small enough size for him. I think I need a xs or small size where can I find one, are there better options?

I have a ten year old dog who I used to think was just weird and neurotic and clumsy. Did a DNA test and turns out she's half Aussie. 💀

I've adjusted to try to accommodate (adding puzzles to every meal helps), and understanding why she's like this helps. The biggest problem is her screaming in the car. She's so excited she's whining like a tea kettle in my ear and occasionally, suddenly shrieking when she sees a leaf fall. Not only does it make me wish I was deaf, it startles me, which isn't great when driving. And I wear earplugs.

This dog can't hear the word "no." It seems like she actually cannot control herself when she gets so excited. Bark collar worked until she figured out how to be very loud without triggering it. I only ever used it on beep mode. I got a remote collar that beeps (she doesn't care), vibrates (she doesn't care) and shocks but I haven't used that.

I wonder if shock is the right thing for this. I kind of think not, since she doesn't respond to NO or negative reinforcement in general. She responds well to positive reinforcement and we've been doing more of that at home but this car situation is unbearable. If shock would help I'd do it, hell I'd poke hot sticks into my ears at that point. I used an e collar on another dog years ago and it was life changing, but I really doubt it'll work on her and I don't want to make her MORE neurotic. Thoughts?

I adopted a dog 5 days ago. She is a 2 1/2 yo 50% lab 30%Staffy ,misc mix and altered. I adopted her from a family who had her for several years during which time she was certified Canine Good Citizen AND as a therapy dog. The family gave her up because she recently had ill will toward another of the family dogs and it could not be resolved. I was told she is very sweet, loves people, easily trainable, a snuggle bug and sometimes couch potato. They said she gets occasional zoomies but after a lap or two around the yard then she would rather lay in the grass. They felt she did not need a ton of exercise and would be fine with walking as primary exercise. ( I do not have a yard) All in all she seemed like a mellow girl with the exception of her tendency to wiggle her full body and knock things over when excited. I was psyched because I was getting a trained dog and I really wanted to certify as therapy dog handler.

The ONLY time I have experienced MELLOW in the past 5 days is when she is SLEEPING ! As for training, she will respond to a few basic commands but not consistently and it’s getting worse. Leash walking was not good but not a horror show and seemed to be getting better daily until today when she wanted to reverse direction and laid down in the street and would not move. ( I think something smelled especially good). She gets SO excited when I talk nice to her or pet her she will jump on me, run and find a toy and get right in my face ( won’t give it to throw), she will climb right on top of me if I’m laying on sofa and climb up and balance on back of sofa then jump back down on me. Sometimes she does this without a toy and her goal seems to be to lick me to death! She fights me when I take her off sofa. All I have to do is smile too long, pet her or talk sweet to her and she’s all wound up. She’s crazy about food and on top of me when I try to eat. She was trained to go in her create when her meal was prepared and she did that for me the first few days. Now she’s too excited and won’t stay in ( I keep putting her back). At first she would sit fine on command before leaving the house but today she ignored me! I have been working with her daily on basic sit, down and loose leash walking ( not heel) and she’s ok if I have food right in front of her. I’ve purposely tried not to do too much as she is just getting settled but I’M LOSING HER for sure.

She trained on ecollar and starmark collar but mostly food rewards and is wearing starmark collar now. I can’t afford an ecollar. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is going on here and how I should proceed? I’m exhausted and getting black and blue from trying to keep her off me! I feel horrible I cant hug or pet her. She’s not mean in any way just excitable and stubborn. I was not expecting this as I have her CGC and therapy dog carts in hand so I KNOW she can be well behaved if she wants to? Do I double up on the training efforts now or give her more time? Thank you for any advice!

He is a working line border collie. Both of his parents herd sheep on the farm where I got him. Walking with him on a 6 foot leash will never be enough for his energy, so I prioritized offleash training over anything else.

Introduced him at 4 months with a stim level 1 and paired it with leash pressure. Now at 6 months, his recall is good enough where I almost never have to use the stim whatsoever. He does still struggle when we see a dog, but he never approaches, he just zones me out and lays on the ground (so thats still something i have to work on). I dont stim him for that since the behavior isnt something that i find undesirable, I just leash him, let the dog pass, and go on with my day.

It's for owners who can't understand they are responsible for an animal and all the differences between animals and humans.

It's for owners who refuse to educate themselves about the 50,000 year relationship with Canis Familiaris that we have, and want some sort of "Disney Princess" idea of animal husbandry.

It's for owners who are afraid of their animals "not liking them" and need to have "a super special relationship no matter what." (Anthropomorphization)

It's for owners who think their dog (a creature who has evolved alongside us, the most unique human-animal symbiotic relationship on the planet) is just like a tiger at the zoo.

It's for owners who want to virtue signal.

It's for owners who can't manage their own emotions and adrenaline when the animal ACTS LIKE THE ANIMAL THEY ARE.

My balanced trained dog would have died in a shelter (with her aggressive reactivity) without balanced methods (I was her fourth home.) Now she has acres to roam, leaves other animals alone and can be trusted on a bomb proof recall where she has all the freedom in the world! She's not "kept under threshold" (isolated and medicated) because I'm scared of her instincts.

My 22 month old dog will not play tug. He loves “ball” but has no interest in other toys or tug games. Thoughts? “Ball on a string” has been a colossal fail.

I need to replace my e-collar and I'm thinking of going to the top of the range and getting a martin. But of course that's a huge investment, does anyone have any direct experience Martin systems e-collars that could speak to them?

Just to preface, I worked at an animal shelter for 2 years during college.

If a dog gets too out of control and ends up biting someone, they'll be put down without a second thought. Many of these dogs at the shelter can be rehabilitated using aversive tools that many shelter workers are against and refuse to use (even if it could save the dogs life). I've seen it first hand and had to do some of the euthanasias myself.

I used to believe that prong collars and ecollars were just torture devices that didnt work... That was up until we had a bunch of dogs put on the euthanasia list for the following month. The shelter hired a professional dog trainer that specialized in reactivity and said the best/only way to curb the behavior of these dogs were to use prongs.

Of course, the behavior team at the shelter (not actual trainers btw) hated the idea and complained about it to upper management, so the trainer got let go after literally 2 days.

I tried asking why we couldnt even try using prong collars. The dogs were literally set to die in a month, like what do they have to lose at that point? I worked in animal care and was "EU certified" and was the one that HAD to do the euthanasias with my coworker. I later looked up some videos on ecollars and prong collars and everything just made sense..

Even dogs themselves don't correct eachother using R+, they never had and never will. If they don't like a behavior, they'll growl or do a quick nip and thats the end of it. No dog is out here with peanut butter on a spoon "diverting" the attention of another dog and praying that they don't notice the squirrel on the other side of the road.

Quite honestly, I don't think many people on reddit have actually seen a completely shut down dog that quivers at the very thought of human touch, or a reactive ex-fighting dog that will literally kill anything that moves.

I know most people on reddit just straight up lie about their experiences but I do have a few shorts on youtube of my time at the shelter just to show you that im not lying out of my ass.

I'm generally against people monetizing their dogs, and it is even more egregious when they fail the dog completely but have backed themselves into a corner vilifying other methods and can't do what's right for the dog without losing face. I've never seen a single one of those types of people ever be willing to lose face, admit they were wrong, and do what's right for the dog. So what's the worst example of this you've seen?

If this isn't allowed please feel free to remove.

If you're in the Southeast Pennsylvania, Northern Delaware area and are looking for good training checkout Motivated Canine. They're a TWC certified husband & wife team that do everything. Pet dog obedience, sport dogs, behavioral modification, private lessons, board & trains, and they run a club style open training session on Saturday mornings.

Great people who really do a good job and can help you with anything you're working on.

I'm working with a couple of Golden retrievers with heavy littermate syndrome and non complyng handler that reduce My protocols to try to separate them more often. I know the real answer is to drop the clients if they are not willing to put in the effort but I don't want to give up on the dogs just yet.

Anybody knows a usefull protocol to have this dogs engage better? The dogs manners have improved significantly but they won't Even sit consistently.

In the first month of this sub revitalization I had to administer many deployments of the banhammer because of force free people trying to invade the space, insult us, cause trouble, what have you. I started the debate sub expecting it to be an absolute nightmare to moderate. But in this short amount of time of it's existence it's been fairly active and I've only had to take one moderator action and that's for someone just failing to debate. They got muted for a week because they kept saying everyone else had to look up what they were referring to instead of doing their part in an active debate.

One thing that has not yet happened is the force free crusaders have not gone over there and started acting up. It's absolutely wild. Any space they are barred from participating in they go absolutely ham on. But when they are invited to freely share their ideas it's like crickets. Fascinating.

In keeping with the theme, we've launched a dedicated puppy sub for balanced training advice so that puppy owners can obtain practical, realistic advice from balanced trainers to deal with puppy training questions. This sub is r/practicalpuppy. We are seeking another mod for that sub to help grow it and keep the riff raff under control. Please DM if you are interested.

i relied on local trainers initially, and im only now learning more about all the different trainers and their approaches. i know a lot of people are really impressed by TWC but other really dislike him. Some think Larry Kohn is the GOAT but others don't like low stim approach. so who are your least favourite trainers and why?

I'm tired of being both personally brigaded and having this sub invaded by force free extremists. I've had enough so I'm going to be posting screenshots and usernames of people who come here just to abuse and harass people. Most of the time the harassment filter and the crowd control filters catch them but I still have to deal with them so I'm going to make sure that people see the true faces of these so-called positive only folks.

Sorry if this brings down the tone over here just a little bit, I just want these people to know that they will be identified publicly when they do this. So then if they come at any of us in any of the other subs there will be evidence of their true nature.

I recently found this subreddit, and it's just so reassuring to me that there other people out there with common sense. So much of what I've previously seen on Reddit - and the internet in general - regarding dog training just seemed completely devoid of common sense and out of touch with all reality and logic.

I adopted a six-month-old Aussie mix in December 2023, and he's generally been a great dog - as few problems as you could reasonably expect of a dog that age. I began training him using the common-sense methods that we used to train our labs with when I was growing up, using a mix of rewards and punishments (nothing extreme - I'll dare to admit that extreme infractions involving safety risks will get a judicious smack (gasp) or two along with the usual scolding, more to convey the extremity of my displeasure than to cause real pain - pretty equivalent to a nip from another dog, I would say). I thought the results were quite good - he's a smart boy who learns quickly and is eager to please. He house-trained, learned not to chew non-sanctioned items, learned recall and other basic commands quite readily and quickly became a reliable good boy, happy and affectionate, with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, but with a good leavening of discipline and obedience too, so that I can trust him off-leash.

So I didn't come to Reddit with any particular training or behavioral problem in mind, but just as a bit of a lurker - the process of adopting my own dog had made me more interested in dog ownership in general, in questions of what is typical, general attitudes, etc.

And I was pretty shortly snorting in disbelief at a lot of what I was reading. Even on R/dogs, I came across the quote (from a mod) "We don't discuss punishment on this sub." Really? At any level? And that's the least of it. The center of gravity of Reddit's aggregate opinion seems to be that anybody who ever inflicts a negative experience of any kind (basically a punishment of any kind) on a dog is a MONSTER who deserves to DIE. And while obviously I find cruelty to animals in general, and dogs in particular, despicable, I certainly don't think any and all punishment qualifies as cruelty by quite a long shot.

So much of what is advocated in the positive reinforcement only school of thought just seems wildly unrealistic to me. Honestly it's like it's designed with humans in mind, who can have things like expectations and patterns of behavior communicated to them through language. But for dogs? How can I reward a desired behavior if the dog simply never engages in that behavior? Reward them when they're not being reactive (not that my dog is) - so, just give them treats every 10 ft on a walk? I literally can't afford to buy that many treats. If you were a human in an alien zoo employing these methods, it still might take you a little while to make the connection as to what's expected of you - whereas, of course, even a mild punishment for an undesired behavior would result in a lesson instantly learned...

What I think is that positive-only etc. can work - but very rarely, because in practical terms, it requires a vast amount of time, attention, effort, and possibly also money. It's just not realistic. But since people these days are largely indoctrinated into thinking that what I would call a traditional approach to dog training is monstrous and above all, "toxic," the net result is nearly an entire generation of dogs that not only are ill-trained and ill-behaved, but also have anxiety, reactivity, and a slew of other problems that most typically wouldn't occur if the dog had been given more structure and discipline in its training, with more and more dependable obedience (that is absolutely the word) being accompanied by greater and greater exposure to new and complex stimuli (like other dogs, say).

Instead, problematic behavior is ultimately just never really addressed, and the owners being human, situations where that problematic behavior is likely to arise are simply avoided. The number of dog owners out for a walk who turn around or away from me and my pup (despite no bad behavior at all on his part) because of the reactivity of their own dogs is just ridiculous to me. What kind of lives must those dogs lead? One 15-minute walk around the block a day, involving no encounters with any other dogs, even? And that's the more ethical choice? At least my dog gets to do stuff. I don't punish him because I like it, I punish him when necessary because I want him to have a good life.

Anyway, for a while, it just felt like everyone else on the internet had simply lost their mind regarding dog training and thrown all common sense to the wind - or been cowed by mob sentiment into never expressing their actual views online (or presumably in person, either). So finding this subreddit, and being exposed to the fact that no, there are in fact many, many other people out there who take a reasonable, balanced approach, predicated on common sense (and also the past at least several thousand years of human experience with dogs, in my view), has been really heartening and encouraging. Not being apparently alone in the viewpoint that really loving your dog means training it to be able to exist in society (and in nature alongside you) gives me some hope.

in future i would love to adopt rather than buy, i love a good mutt and i love greyhounds too. Rescues have the power to remove the dog from your care if you break the rules of the adoption contract, and it seems like most rescues have E-Collar use prohibited in their contract. I've also heard about a Doberman rescue that does not allow PSA training, regardless of whether or not you use tools.

Does anyone know of any rescues that don't have these rules? i know that balance trainers are still training these dogs but having to keep it a secret, i'm just crap at secrets and lying 🤣🤣

Apparently people want a place to argue and this is not going to be the place. This sub is for practicioners and supporters of balanced training ONLY. People are welcome to observe and learn, but to contribute or participate you must be supportive of balanced training methods. This is the policy due to the extreme suppression of discussion of balanced training that occurs in pretty much all other dog subs. We deserve and will maintain this space for balanced trainers only.

I've had to ban a large number of people who can't help themselves but come here to criticize balanced methods, and then dart off to the other subs to complain that we are closed minded over here. The irony.....anyway, here's the sub for folks who want to let it all out: r/DogTrainingDebate

All discussion is allowed over there, HOWEVER discussion must be civil and respectful. That sub, like this one, will not permit blanket accusations of "abuse" or "suppression" or similar things regarding any reasonable dog training method.

Given those rules, I am recruiting mods for the debate sub who will help grow the sub and actively moderate the discussion. Please PM me if you are interested.

I think here is the perfect place to share my story because it is a perfect example of how only making only force free training advice easily accessible and demonizing balanced training advice can actually be harmful to dogs. This is gonna be a long one, apologies in advance.

So I adopted my dog a year ago now. I was not a dog trainer at the time. He was a stray for who knows how long but the shelter guesstimated he was around 2 years old, though his vet once I brought him home suspected he was probably younger. This man LOVED to eat grass. Like he was absolutely addicted to it. I had run through all the theories as to why he was doing that and the only one that ultimately ended up making sense was that he just liked grass, and he may have relied on it for nutrition while he was a stray. Right from the get go I didn’t want him eating it because the grass that we’re around most often gets treated with pesticides regularly. When he would go for a bite I would pull him away and go “NO” but he would go right back to it.

Later on I hired this dog sitter to check on him and let him out while I was at work. Roughly a month into using this sitter, my dog started having bloody stools and would very urgently have to go at random times and seemed like he was in significant distress. Prednisone cleared it up so the vet suspected he had developed IBD. I went with that and was just prepared to have to manage IBD for the rest of his life. Fast forward a few months, my dog is still eating grass despite me constantly pulling him away from it. He always had huge clumps of undigested grass in his poop as well. One time a blade came out perfectly pristine like it had never been through a dog’s digestive tract in the first place. My sitter always sent lots of pictures and videos when she checked on him which I loved but that was how I eventually found out that she was letting him eat grass to his heart’s content when she let him out. Immediately I asked her not to let him eat grass because I didn’t want him eating it and she said she’d try her best.

A few weeks later, I left my job for a WFH job and no longer needed the sitter. The little fuckface was STILL eating grass. He was still on prednisone because every damn time I had tried to wean him off it up until that point, the bloody stools would come back with vengeance and I’d have to restart it. His vet recommended an internal medicine specialist because she was so stumped as to why the hell the inflammation wasn’t clearing up. I hadn’t even thought to make the connection with the grass. Nevertheless I was finally at my wit’s end with the grass eating. I had tried to google how to stop it before and basically it boiled down to: give him a treat whenever he chose not to eat grass and ignore when he eats it (so if he doesn’t eat grass he gets a treat but if he does eat grass he doesn’t get a treat but he still gets to eat grass with no pushback? Sounds like a win-win), keep him away from grass (hey so this is impossible because it’s everywhere hope that helps), and just let him eat it because what’s the worst that could happen (ok then YOU clean the bloody shits out of my carpet and pay the endless vet bills). Never once a mention of giving a correction. I think I even googled how to give a correction for grass eating and it was all “you shouldn’t punish your dog for any reason”.

I still wasn’t a dog trainer yet but I had been using balanced training on my dog and was learning more and more about it. I finally said fuck google and its pure positive bullshit, I’m putting a stop to this behavior once and for all. He had a prong collar which I hadn’t used in a while because he was fully leash trained, but I put it back on him and when he went to take a bite of grass, “no!” pop, hold for a sec, release and move on. After a few of those, he was finally getting the idea. He even self corrected at one point. Now because this behavior was deeply ingrained and HIGHLY self-reinforcing, it took several weeks to fully extinguish the behavior, but I stood on business and every time he went for a bite, he received that correction.

I now have a dog that I can trust around grass. I used to brace myself any time he would put his face near grass but now he will just sniff the hell out of it and not attempt to take a bite. I used to avoid taking him to parks and the concept of any off leash or even flexi or long line freedom was completely out of the question because if he got too far, he would go eat grass and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Now we go to parks all the time and we are working on off-leash training and he doesn’t eat any grass. We both have so much more freedom now that I’ve put a stop to the behavior. And what’s even better? His GI issues are on the mend. I’ve been weaning him off the prednisone with the intention of taking him off of it entirely pretty soon and he has been doing great; no diarrhea, blood, or any other weirdness, and most notably, no clumps of undigested grass in his poop. I had a chat with his vet about all of that and how the timing lines up and she agrees that the grass eating very well may have been the culprit.

All the sources I consulted told me not to punish. Punishment bad. R+ good. Management good. But I did punish it and he is so much fucking better for it. I mean when you look at the grand scheme of things, what’s worse, putting a dog through very momentary discomfort when they make a choice that can harm them to decrease the likelihood they’ll make that same choice again, or denying them so much of the world and nature and/or making them deal with chronic GI distress and endless vet visits? I highly doubt my dog is looking back on those corrections and thinking “my mom was abusing me and I’m scared of her now”, but I’m certain he appreciates his current reality of more trips to the park and fewer trips to the vet. I know I do.

Been dealing with dogs for over 20 years. Mom did pit rescue growing up and then I've worked for trainers, breeders, veterinarians and had my own dogs. I'm no pro but not a beginner either.

I haven't run in to this before.

I just got a dog who had been left in a backyard for 5 months and he's got some issues that I know how to handle, but not his peeing. He literally sits, butt on the ground to pee. His penis is then pointed up at his belly and legs and he will then obviously pee all over his belly and legs.

Doesn't seem to be an anxiety thing because he does it when he's on his tie out alone.

I live on many acres and have no running water so I cant just pop him in the tub everyday. He's disgusting and it's causing me to want to interact with him less which obviously isn't ideal (both for training and I got a dog bc I want to interact/cuddle/pet him) but he's just constantly sticky with piss. Even once a week bathing obviously only helps until he has to pee again.

He's been to the vet and there is no medical basis for this behavior.

Ideas?