The Mop Up Squad

There is a trope—long disproven and actually dangerous for dogs—among those trainers who continue to use aversive stimuli in dog training: they say that they are the only ones who can train aggressive dogs. They regularly accuse us positive reinforcement trainers of allowing dogs to needlessly die when their antagonistic and outdated training techniques could […]

Why We Need to Modify the Humane Hierarchy

Why we need to modify the Humane Hierarchy Our guest blogger is Tim Steele, a newly minted Academy graduate and owner of Behavior Matters Academy in Santa Clara CA.  His post is part of Companion Animal Psychology’s Train For Rewards Blog Party 2018. I love the idea of the Humane Hierarchy. We’ve needed a simple-to-understand graphic which gives […]