Arrive Dog Training

04/19/2025

I see so many owners getting caught up in excessive and unhelpful rumination about their dog’s behavior — where it’s coming from, why it’s happening, and what they should or shouldn’t do about it.

This causes many to miss critical moments where they could be offering helpful feedback to their dogs; making profound improvements to their behavior and enhancing overall relationship dynamics.

The “Behavioral Decision Making Matrix” is a simple guide for those who find themselves getting caught up (frozen) in the many questions their mind’s present when their dog does *something* they have feelings about, but are unsure how to proceed, and it enables them to quickly make evaluations, decisions, find clarity, and take action if needed.

A few things to clarify.

When I say is the behavior “healthy”, that means is the behavior healthy for all involved? That means you, the world your dog will interact with, and your dog itself. You’ll have to do the work (emotionally and intellectually) to ensure your version of healthy is actually that — and best to figure this out in advance.

When I say is the behavior “desired”, that means by you. Yes, you will have to take responsibility for determining what is desired, and you will often have to deny your dog what they desire in order to best serve them and you and everyone else. Someone has to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t desired, and that’s a job best taken on by the human. This doesn’t mean become a tyrant and the destroyer of all that is enjoyable, but it does mean you’re entitled and responsible for making this decision.

As for allowing, disallowing, reward, and punishment, a few things. Often allowing is more than enough for a behavior (positive or negative) to be reinforced, with or without reward. Also, there are many times when actual rewards are not only unnecessary, but also overkill and counterproductive — and there are times when actually rewarding is very helpful. As for punishment, I’m using the operant conditioning definition, so don’t let your emotions get you rankled. Look it up if you don’t know.

Hope this helps. :)

04/08/2025

Okay, now before freaking out, breathe…

I know many will be scrambling for their phones to panic dial 911 for their sudden coronary issues, but if you can get through the text, I promise you’ll be okay. 🙂

State of Mind training isn’t about snappy or flashy obedience. It’s not about speed of reaction or how many commands your dog knows — it’s simply about helping dogs who seriously struggle with relaxation, calmness, and having an off-switch, and who default to chaos, anxiety, and uncomfortable brains and bodies. These are dogs with deregulated nervous systems — which are the kind of dogs we see suffering (along with their owners) on the daily.

If the above doesn’t apply to you or your dog or your clients, please skip this post. It’s not for you. But, if this does ring some all too familiar bells, I encourage you to at least try what I have listed here before making any judgements. This list (which is only a partial list) is the byproduct of many, many years of looking to find ways to help dogs who are struggling living chaotic, anxious, stressed out lives.

1/ Creates the “Off-Switch”.
2/ Trains a calm mindset in challenging, arousal-inducing environments (90/10 is a rough outline of 90% structured walk and 10% sniff/potty time on your release. Bonus points/benefits for walking slow!)
3/ So many miss this. It’s crucial, complete turn-off time and helps your dog’s mind and body detox and heal. Trust me!
4/ This ensures both spots create maximum relaxation and peace.
5/ So many allow unhealthy behaviors which are symptomatic of unhealthy mindsets. Don’t make this mistake.
6/ This is reserved for the serious anxiety cases, and is incredibly effective/helpful for them.
7/ These are common auto-pilot moments that encourage impulsive, aroused, pushy, behavior.
8/ Constant verbal inputs create neurotic dogs.
9/ Constant physical inputs create neurotic dogs.
10/ I know out of all of these this one will cause the most consternation and outrage. Once again, before you freak out, try it. Both food and overly-excited interactions FOR THESE KINDS OF DOGS will exacerbate the issues you’re wanting to resolve.
11/ You have to address the unhealthy stuff to make room for the healthy stuff.
12/ Many dogs will obsessively lick, scratch, pace, whine, circle, self-mutilate. You have to correct this to break the toxic patterns.

That’s it. If you DO have a dog who struggles to be calm, relaxed, and at ease in the world, give this list a try for a month and see what you get. You won’t do any harm, and you just might be shocked what you find.

PS, I didn’t include healthy exercise, play, and affection, because these items are almost never what’s missing from the lives of dogs like this — this stuff comes natural to owners, AND because this stuff is touted by almost everyone in the training world whereas what I’ve shared isn’t.

PPS, If you feel compelled to disagree and share in great detail precisely why I’m incorrect, just know I’ll delete your comment. I’m not soliciting critical feedback here, I’m sharing personal experience with many thousands of these very specific kinds of dogs. You’re of course more than welcome to post whatever you believe on the pages and platforms you’ve created. Lastly, if you have any honest, good faith questions or would like clarification, feel free to ask. I will do my best. ❤️

03/29/2025

While there’s plenty of folks who will happily tell you no such thing is needed, and your heart will happily agree with them, reality doesn’t much care about those pedaling falsehoods, or your emotional preferences.

We can continue to go down this road of denial and delusion, but I promise you you’ll only end up deeper in the struggle—and so will your dog.

There’s a reason any honest and knowledgeable trainer can typically stop most of the unwanted behaviors that are making your life miserable; and do so close to immediately—because they’re not enveloped in denial or delusion. Sure they have more skills and knowledge, but their primary advantage is a firm grasp on reality and an unwillingness to dance around it.

And a large part of that embrace of reality is the embrace of skillfully applied, emotionally neutral punishment. Of course they teach the other stuff—the behaviors you DO want—but that’s easy…both to do and to talk about. Punishment is the elephant in the room; the elephant very few want to look squarely in the eyes.

That all said, it’s your life and your call. You get to do this dog training and dog-living-with thing however you want. But from where I stand, and from the dogs and owners I see who are both struggling and miserable and in need of help, the avoidance of that which can transform all this struggle and misery is both selfish and emotionally immature.

Choosing to bring a dog into your life SHOULD mean choosing to do all that is beneficial for them, including—perhaps especially including—that which is difficult, uncomfortable, and emotionally challenging.

03/29/2025

We all know the definition of insanity, but when it comes to training our dogs and dealing with behavior issues, I watch owner after owner fall into doing the “insane” thing… continuously repeating the same no-results-delivering stuff and hoping for a better result.

Here’s the thing. If engaging in positive-only training approaches created the desired results owners are desperate for, I wouldn’t be writing this post, and thousands upon thousands of balanced trainers wouldn’t be in thriving businesses

So many of you have allowed your common sense and your personal life experiences and observations of how reality actually works… to be hijacked. You’ve actually allowed yourself to be re-programmed by those who use emotional manipulation; the promises of never having to experience anything emotionally challenging (for you and your dog); and being the kinder more virtuous, more sophisticated, more science-based, more humane owner — even though somewhere, deep down, you know it’s all bu****it.

But you buy it because you want it to be true. Like the “Make a million dollars in a week without any risk or effort.”, “Or get that flat tummy and perfect butt in 7 days, without dieting or exercise!” We all know this stuff is nonsense, (God i hope so!) but we often still get pulled into stuff we know simply isn’t possible, but because it’s so appealing we suspend disbelief.

Owners are told, but they also critically want to believe, that they can just love, praise, and reward their way out of their dog’s issues — and it’ll all be great.

Except, as we all keep seeing over and over — it’s anything but great.

This is your reality wake up call. You know that negative consequences, and the awareness of their possible application, have had a huge impact on your own behavior, as well as all those around you. You know it doesn’t destroy you, it informs, reminds, and corrects you. It often times is the only thing that has saved you from making truly terrible mistakes — or, at least saved you from putting them on repeat.

So if you’re struggling with your dog, and you’ve been trying an all positive approach, before you exclaim to the world how you’ve tried everything, just take a breath and check in with the fact that you’ve done nothing of the sort.

What you’ve done is the “insanity” part — in two ways: 1/ you’ve repeatedly engaged in a training approach which hasn’t delivered the promised results, and you’ve ignored that reality. And 2/ you agreed to invest time, money, and hope into a training approach that you know deep down doesn’t align with the reality of your own personal experience of life.

So when you’re *truly* ready to make something positive happen, it’s time to pull on our big boy and big girls pants and embrace the fact that if we’re going to create a healthy and harmonious life with our dogs, we need to share clearly not only what we want, but critically also what we don’t want. And that second part is only going to be achieved by sharing something — gasp — that is negative. Something that makes engaging in the behavior unpleasant, uncomfortable, unrewarding.

Or not. Totally up to you. We all get to choose whether we prefer a difficult reality and all it has offer, or an easy fantasy and all it has to rob us of.

03/22/2025

So many of you struggling with reactivity issues need to do two things:

1/ Digest and process this simple formula, memorize it, and do not attempt to make it more complicated than it is.

2/ Stop allowing your reactive dog to look at other dogs.

Owners, once you truly *get* number one, and you see the clear sequence that takes you from relaxed/neutral dog to exploding dog, you are now empowered to solve the problem.

Of course the training universe will attempt to make reactivity into something profoundly complex — which will cause you to hesitate and second guess… which will cause you to fail. It’s not complex — not when it comes to how the reactivity escalation sequence works. Don’t let the multitude of online experts mislead you. Keep it simple, and you’ll succeed.

As for number two, this is also simple. Truly reactive dogs are unable to look at other dogs without moving — within milliseconds — onto the “lock”, and once locked on the “load” and “launch” come wildly fast and are often impossible to stop.

But because owners think: “Maybe he/she won’t do it this time.”, or “I don’t want to create a negative association.”, or “I want my dog to enjoy the sight of other dogs and make friends.”, or prior to this post you simply didn’t fully understand that looking was the gateway to the explosion… you allow the look.

Instead of doing what all the other owners who are struggling with reactivity are doing, do something different. Understand the reactivity escalation sequence, and knowing how it works, simply correct your reactive dog for attempting to get the sequence rolling by looking at prospective targets.

Yes, initially, we teach seriously reactive dogs not to look at other dogs — because they don’t know how to do so in a healthy fashion. And no, it doesn’t create a negative association — it begins to disarm the already existing negative association and gives you the chance to help your dog see other dogs from an emotionally neutral, and thus healthy standpoint. Over time, as your dog becomes more and more neutral (naturally counter-conditioning themselves) around dogs, you can slowly, incrementally, organically start to explore your dog’s limits and abilities. Perhaps, in a few months, your dog will be able to look at other dogs without escalation. Perhaps it will take more time. And perhaps you’ve got a very serious customer (a 1%er) who even after great amounts of time and effort still can’t look at dogs without racing through the R.E.S. Happily, these dogs are extremely rare — and thus why they’re called 1%ers. 🙂

PS, please for the love of all that is holy in actually successful dog training: don’t use food to try to redirect your reactive dog. Correct the looking behavior firmly and give your dog clear guidance/information about what is and isn’t desired/allowed. Because, if your dog is truly reactive, they won’t care what high-value food item you’re waiving in front of them — they will just continue to stare, and now you’re screwed.

PPS, sorry to say, if your reactive dog will take food, and disengage from the trigger/target, then you don’t have a reactive dog. True reactivity will ignore food every time, or will take it and go right back to the stare — and if they will take it, congratulations, now you’re training your dog to be reactive.

03/22/2025

You don’t have to *actually* train your dog to engage in problematic behavior, you only have to allow it — from there nature will do the rest.

It typically starts out as a small, “no big deal”, testing of the waters. And because the behavior is so small and seemingly benign, many let it go. But as the waters repeatedly permit the tiny, seemingly benign behavior to be repeated over and over, something strange occurs…

The once small, innocuous, “no big deal” behavior has now become anything but. It now occurs far more frequently, and it’s far stronger and firmer in its presentation.

This is the place where many owners reach out for help from professionals. And usually they will relay a story of the issues coming virtually out of nowhere. But that’s never the case. Problematic behavior always starts small (that’s the “out of nowhere part”), and always grows into something more if allowed.

So here’s one of the most important tips I can share with you. What you allow is what you train. And the reason you allow it is almost always because it doesn’t appear to be that serious initially. But then at some point it becomes something you’re no longer able to ignore. So instead of doing what so many do, and falling into the trap that so many fall into, work to see the small moments of unwanted behavior as your “go-signal” for addressing the issue. These are your chances to head problem behaviors off at the pass, and also to ensure your relationship dynamics never end up in the dysfunctional space that so many owners end up in.

And maybe just maybe, you’ll never need a professional to help — because you never allowed the small stuff to become the big stuff. :)

03/17/2025

03/17/2025

While there are undeniably many factors that are having an impact on canine behavior, in my opinion they’re small potatoes, and don’t come anywhere near close to truly answering what’s going on.

Yes there’s lots of poor breeding. Yes many folks select dog breeds or mixes who come with more “stuff” than others. And yes there are more dogs in homes than ever before.

But all of these same dogs who have developed problem behaviors come to us, and many other skilled, reality-based trainers — and their issues strangely disappear.

They become wonderfully balanced, well-behaved, and super enjoyable dogs. The same ones that we could easily ascribe the above causes as the causes to their issues.

Here’s the thing most owners don’t want to acknowledge: we’ve changed far more than the dogs have.

We’ve been consistently and relentlessly programmed by society to eschew and despise strength, firmness, and hierarchy — while simultaneously we’ve been taught to embrace and cherish softness, permissiveness, and human/dog equality.

When you examine this shift, and if you’re willing to be completely honest that it has indeed shifted, understanding why we’re in this mess with our dogs is wildly obvious.

Because even if modern tools and training have advanced by leaps and bounds, if the mindset which employs them is one that finds all the heathy, transformative components of leading our dogs to be repulsive… none of it matters.

So the real answer to solving the canine behavior issue epidemic isn’t to be found in the superficial and the easy, it’s to be found in solving the human behavior issues which are the downstream effects of the dysfunctional beliefs and values we’ve allowed ourselves to be infected by.

03/17/2025

Few tools are as demonized and misunderstood as is the E-Collar — and few things will create as profound a knee-jerk, emotionally outraged response as suggesting using this tool with fearful dogs. Because for many their only concept of the tool is that of a simple, blunt device, good for only shocking dogs for doing unwanted things.

And if that’s your only reference point or understanding of the tool, the response makes sense. But the reality of the E-Collar in 2025, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, is something far closer to surgical magic.

Modern, high quality E-Collars are capable of being so sensitive you can’t feel them. And typically, the levels used for most dogs in most training situations, is that the tool is used at levels most humans don’t feel, or if they do it’s a faint tingle.

For context, the most popular E-Collar has 100 levels, and most dogs respond to levels between 3 and 8…out of 100! Which is a far cry from the one dimensional, shocking device that many think of, and that many who demonize it portray it as.

The truth is, those who demonize the tool almost never have any real-world experience with it. And if they do, it’s certainly not an expert level, nuanced, surgical application experience. I’ve met countless people at seminars who’ve remarked that they had no idea the E-Collar could be used in such a delicate and nuanced, and yet still highly effective fashion.

And this brings us to using the E-Collar with fearful dogs. I’ve been using E-Collars for over 20 years. And during that time I’ve worked with thousands of nervous/insecure/fearful dogs, and watched them transform in profound ways.

The approaches for this work aren’t about “correcting” and “zapping” dogs for being afraid, it’s about leveraging the neutrality of the tool to create what the dog perceives as a non-coercive, non-compulsive interaction, which, if applied correctly, causes the dog to feel that they themselves are doing the work — rather than being forced — which prevents the fight/flight response from kicking in, which creates the perception of the dog voluntarily doing the work, which is the basic tenet of successful exposure therapy for humans.

It’s why I’m able to unlock, relax, and connect with so many dogs so much faster and at such a deeper level than with other approaches. Which of course enables these dogs to move through their fears and get to the other side. Which is what we all want.

You don’t have to take my word for it, you can simply go through my videos and see dog after dog go from panic and escape, to relaxed and happy (or happier!) to work.

Tomorrow morning I’m releasing a comprehensive E-Collar-based collection of transformational videos working with fearful dogs on my Patreon channel. If any of you are looking for some truly deeper approaches to helping fearful dogs, I highly suggest you take a look. :)

03/13/2025

One of the most common comments I get is: “My dog behaves so much better when they have their training collar on.”

And one of the most common questions I get is: “Why does my dog behave so much better when they have their training collar on?”

Which always causes me to want to ask: “Do you drive differently when a cop pulls up behind you? And do you also drive differently when they pull off the freeway?”

While training collars can be used to help teach dogs things you do want (like sit, down, place, recall, heel etc.), they also can be used to help teach dogs things you don’t want (like jumping, mouthing, barking, or non-compliance for any known command).

Thus training collars, when used properly, represent complex, multi-dimensional associations between your dog and the tool. They predict the fun of training, or the joys of a walk or car ride or off-leash adventure — and they also predict accountability for behavioral nonsense.

This should explain why dogs behave better with their training collar on, and also why they get excited (another of the most common comments I see) when the training collar is presented. They clearly understand what the tool predicts — and in the case of the dog behaving better it’s simply because the dog knows they’re truly accountable and consequences for poor choices are in play.

Just like you. :)

PS, I’m not saying that the police are a perfect analog to a training collar. I understand they don’t represent or predict fun, joy, or adventure (well, it depends on how you define adventure! 😂). Let’s just say they represent one dimension of the training collar — the accountability dimension… it’s up to you to provide the fun, joy, and legal adventure for yourself whilst not attracting unwanted “training collar” interactions. 😉