Several people have told me they use some of my videos as examples for their students. On this page, I have grouped together the posts I think would be most relevant for teachers and trainers. I will add to the page as I create new posts and movies that fall into this category. Please link to this page, any posts, or any videos that are helpful to you.

Blog Posts with Videos

How Do I Get My Dog into the Pool?  The steps I took to desensitize Lewis, my teenage dog, to an above-ground kids’ swimming pool. Handy for any dog who is wary of getting into things.

Teaching a Dog to Station While Another Dog Works  The “trick” to teaching one dog to wait quietly for their turn while you train another dog. If I could teach Lewis, you can teach your dog! This is the same method I demo in more detail below, in “A Secret for Training Two Dogs.”

Teaching Your Dog to Self Interrupt A demo and explanation showing my dog interrupting herself from getting glued to the fence to bark at neighbors and their dog.

Dogs Notice Everything  A series of videos showing dogs failing to respond or responding incorrectly to cues for a variety of reasons. Specifically intended as a response to folks who call their dogs “stubborn” or accuse them of “giving me the paw.”

My Dogs Do Know Sit! A Hint for Training the Sit Stay A followup to an earlier post where I showed a problem with how I taught the sit-stay. But the problem wasn’t so bad after all. This post has a tip for human body language during stays, and the video has a demo.

Allergy Shots for Dogs: How I Made them the Best Thing Ever  My own system for helping my two allergic dogs not care much about the potentially painful shot because of the routine around it and their special treats.

Automatic vs. Socially Mediated Negative Reinforcement This is not really a training video, but it models what I think is an important conceptual difference about negative reinforcement: automatic vs. socially mediated. (Hint: socially mediated is the type we use in training. In a number of ways, it’s not the same as what we encounter in real life.)

Preventing Dog Reactivity with a Barrier  How a simple piece of cardboard prevented a lot of over-aroused behaviors from Clara.

Tossing Cookies: Delivering Treats and Toys in Dog Training  Some ways to practice food and toy tossing skills.

My Dog Isn’t Food Motivated…Or Is She? A simple demonstration that shows how all dogs are motivated by food to some degree, and a discussion of the common misunderstandings about that.

Get Out Of My Face! Teaching an Incompatible Behavior  How I taught Clara to perform a default down whenever I bent over, instead of mugging my face.

Lumping it: A Public Service Announcement An example of raising criteria too fast and the effect it has on the dog.

Superstition Ain’t the Way  A selection of superstitious behaviors I have accidentally taught my dogs. In some you can actually see the behavior develop.

What You Reinforce is What You Get An example of not holding to criteria, and letting the dog “un-train” the behavior I trained.

Classical Conditioning: Creating a Positive Response to Barking How I classically conditioned Clara to have such a positive response to another dog barking that she never joins in, just reports to me for her goodies.

The Barking Recall Clara’s classically trained response to another dog barking is so strong that she will run from the bottom of the yard into the house to report in whenever it happens.

Summer Learns an Alternative to Being the Fun Police  Summer learns to come to me instead of harassing the other dogs when they play.

Miracles Can Happen: Summer’s Good Behavior Generalizes Summer reports to me when there is a big, noisy dog visiting at the neighbor’s house. She has generalized her response to the rowdy play of my other dogs to a new situation.

Dog Interrupted: The Value of Reorientation Summer can now interrupt her own barking to come seek me out to check in.

But How do I Tell My Dog She’s Wrong? A post that features a video with Sue Ailsby and her young dog Syn learning stand with duration and stand for exam. It clearly demonstrates Syn learning from the lack of a click.

The Right Word Work on verbal cue discrimination, using the principles of reduced error learning.

A Little Heavy on the Body English  An example where I was trying to test a verbal cue discrimination between the behaviors of going to mat and going to crate. However, when it came to the test, you could see that I am obviously still giving physical cues.

Replacing a Poisoned Cue How I rehabilitated Summer’s poisoned “Stay” cue. The video show her stress signals resulting from the earlier cue and her progress with the new cue which had only positive associations.

Operant Learning Illustrated by Examples Just what it says. A movie demonstrating the four processes (quadrants) of operant learning. A stuffed dog generally stands in when the example includes an aversive.

A Secret for Training Two Dogs Step by step instructions for training multiple dogs, with video examples. The secret is to realize that the harder job belongs to the dog that is “waiting,” not the active dog.

The Right Word: Reducing Errors in Verbal Cue Discrimination Teaching individual release cues methodically with the goal of few errors and high precision.

Release Me! Demonstration of the individual release cues discussed in the previous post and movie.

Teaching a Dog to Back Up without Using Body Pressure  A brief post and video tutorial on using the method where a dog goes into a channel between objects and you mark when they back out. I made this movie after watching the truly awful methods commonly used for teaching dogs to back up, and because I was unable to find another video demonstrating this particular method to jump start shaping backing up.

Bootleg Reinforcement The definition and an example of bootleg reinforcement, followed by an intervention that ends up being very enriching for the dog.

Go Sniff! Then Please Come Back! In order to use sniffing as a reinforcement on walks, there are some prerequisite skills the dog needs. The post discusses the need for skills and describes them. The movie demos some exercises to develop the skills.

Clara Relaxes: Video Progress I put together a page with my three videos showing Clara’s progress as I taught her to relax. They can be used as a success story (in my opinion), but also to demonstrate the effects of some common mistakes in training.

Dog Training Basics: Getting the Behavior This post talks about how to get initial behaviors that one can reinforce. It has four embedded videos that show my process of teaching my then-puppy Clara the “down” behavior from the very beginning. There are plenty of errors, and I comment on them.

8 Common Dog Training Errors: Cautionary Tales Description and video portrayal of some of the easiest mistakes to make in training a dog. This is one of my most popular posts of all time.

7 Common Dog Training Errors: More Cautionary Tales Description and video portrayal of more easy mistakes to make in training a dog. This is also a very popular post.

6 Common Dog Training Errors More easy mistakes to make in training.

YouTube Videos (no blog commentary so far)

Negative Reinforcement vs. Positive Reinforcement  I show an example of a behavior I taught (long ago) using body pressure and the stressful effects on the dogs, then reteach it with positive reinforcement and show a dramatic difference.

Kongs for Beginners How to introduce food toys to inexperienced dogs by starting off very easy.

Intermediate Kongs Slightly more difficult Kongs.

I hope these are useful. And by the way, I take requests for videos. If it is humane, in my dogs’ and my capabilities, and won’t hurt our training in the long run, I’ll try it. I don’t mind being a bad example if it isn’t too humiliating and if it can help some people.

© Eileen Anderson 2015