Arrive Dog Training

01/25/2025

The current dog training world would much rather you chase that which you cannot know, because it appeals to their deep desire to appear and feel sophisticated, virtuous, and kind — and because if you’re busy chasing the unknowable, and believe that one cannot act until they DO know, then one won’t be correcting their dog… which is a feature, not a bug.

The alternative, is to shake off the emotionally manipulative, strategic programming that isn’t in the least meant to help you or your dog, and instead simply focus on what IS knowable — the observable behavior.

I know this is a wild, and crazy idea. Because we’ve heard for so long that we have to get to the foundational emotional cause. But there is no singular, simple, straightforward emotional cause. Your dog’s behavior is made up of a multivariate stew, which includes: genetics (breed tendencies, cognitive ability and stability), personality traits (soft, or pushy, biddable or snarky?), environmental factors (current and past), and emotions (another multivariate stew that is unthinkably complex and truly unknowable), which are all mixed together and come together to create the problem behavior. So you have an endless list of ingredients and influences blending and competing and vacillating (depending on what’s occurring in the environment) and some “expert” is going to try to tell me (or you) that they can know and get to THE foundational emotional state or cause? And you’re going to tell me this with a straight face?

Haha, all those lying, mentally parasitized, ignorant, ideologues determined to derail owners from succeeding with their dogs.

As I said above, you can only truly, unequivocally know, and hence, properly act upon observable, demonstrated behavior and the quality of it. It’s the the only thing that isn’t nonsensical obfuscation. And strangely, this is the approach we use with all of the intensely troubled dogs who come into our program. And even more strangely, they all make astounding progress — and we’ve never wasted a moment tying ourselves into the mental knots that so many humans love to get trapped in.

This training stuff is far more simple than they want you to believe. But if you knew it was simple, and they couldn’t leverage fear to impact your behavior, then of course they couldn’t control you. And where’s the fun and benefit for their cause in that?

01/21/2025

01/19/2025

1/ Decide that you are going to, without reservation or guilt, lead your dog; holding them to a far higher standard of behavior. Also decide that when that standard is breached you will, without reservation or guilt, hold them accountable and share valuable consequences which change behavior. (This will not destroy your relationship, on the contrary, it will rebuild it in a far more healthy fashion.)
2/ Ensure your dog is dragging a leash or longline connected to a prong collar (while supervised) so you’re able to train as needed and correct any infractions as they come up — and not play the catch me if you can game.
3/ Make peace with the “Indoors is for calm/chill behavior and outdoors is for play/craziness.” approach, and stick with it. This alone will change your life.
4/ Crate train your dog. Your dog should sleep in the crate at night, be crated when you’re not home, and spend some downtime crated during the day as well to prevent any separation anxiety and allow them to totally turn off and reset. Ensure your dog enters and exists the crate on your command and does so calmly — this is CRITICAL!
5/ Correct any whining, barking, digging, destruction while in the crate firmly and ensure it stops. (E-Collar is best, but bonking the crate, or sq**rt bottle, or opening the crate door and slamming it can often work.)
6/ Teach basic prong collar obedience: sit, down, place, recall, heel. This is far easier than you think. (My YT “The Good Dog Training” has all the videos for free.)
7/ You have to master the walk. You can’t transform your relationship if one of the biggest components is unhealthy. Watch my training videos closely. All the info is there.
8/ Control all freedom. YOU decide where your dog should be. Free roaming is not allowed at this point — your dog should be in command at all times except for sleeping, potty breaks, and specific play times. (This isn’t forever.)
9/ You control access to all resources — this means toys, food, people. Do not allow free access to anything valuable.
10/ This is a no furniture period. This means no couch or bed. Remember the dog is supposed to be in command if out of the crate and in the house during this period. (This also isn’t forever.)
11/ Correct any whining, barking, or assorted nonsense from place or down — these commands should be calm and chilled. Also correct any overly aroused, hyped-up, chaotic behavior (mindset) in general. You can use leash and prong, or a bonker for this. (And of course e-collar if you’re using one.)
12/ Ensure your dog waits for permission to go through any high value threshold. Correct with leash and prong firmly for non-compliance.
13/ Treat small infractions like large ones. And share larger consequences for smaller infractions for the most relationship/attitude mileage. This one ( #13) is probably the least understood on this list, and probably the most transformative. Work on it!!
14/ Treat pushy, bratty, impulse control-free moments not as “An excited dog” but as pushy, bratty, impulse control-free dog who has no respect for you. Address accordingly, if you want a respectful dog.
15/ Realize that every addressing and every allowance is a conversation that tells your dog who you are and who they are. These moments will define the healthiness or dysfunction of your relationship dynamics. Most folks will struggle and slide with how consistently they enforce the rules and how firmly. Don’t make this common mistake.
16/ Keep play and affection moderate and lowkey — for now. Play hard to get, and let your dog’s polite, respectful behavior earn them more of the good, soft, sweet stuff from you. (This isn’t forever.)
17/ Ensure your dog is getting sufficient physical exercise in the form of structured walks and structured playtime. But be very careful to not fall into the “A tired dog is a good dog” trap.” A tired dog is simply that — tired, for the moment. It’s easy to accidentally build an athlete who requires more and more exercise to be momentarily tired. Instead make sure your dog is getting the physical AND the mental exercise by way of duration place and down. It’s easy to miss the transformative value of conditioning calming work (like long duration place and down) for the more obvious and conventional physical exercise — but you will be missing a huge part of the success puzzle if you do so. Dogs should be able to be calm without having just run a marathon — and yes, this goes for even high drive dogs.

If you’re consistent with the above you will absolutely begin to transform your relationship. It won’t happen overnight, but contained in the prescription above are the ingredients which smart dog trainers use to transform dogs in training day after day. And for those looking for even more success, after you’ve mastered the prong collar obedience, I’d highly recommend you move to e-collar work. There’s no rush, but this final transition will enable you to hit on and off-leash goals you likely can only dream of.

PS, there’s a lot of stuff here. Don’t brush over it or breeze through it. The degree of depth and commitment to this list will determine your outcome. All of this can be accomplished in 2-3 months if you work hard. Imagine having a different dog and different relationship 3 months from now. And then imagine how much more fun, freedom, and inclusion that will create for you and your dog. Lastly, remember that the firmness of this outline is a means to an end. It’s meant to create a hard reset/overhaul for those truly struggling. If you’re not struggling, or if things are only mildly problematic, see what you can pick and choose from here to improve your situation as needed.

PPS, I haven’t focused on the value of affection or play nearly as much as I have the “other stuff” — meaning the rules, structure, and accountability side of things. There’s a good reason — it’s exceptionally rare that when owners are struggling that it’s due to a lack of play or affection. These things are almost always in surplus, whilst the stuff I shared above — aka the hard stuff — is almost always in terribly short supply. 🙂

01/17/2025

Over and over I hear folks talking about how they only need to use tone 99% of the time with their e-collar trained dog for recall — implying there’s something unique, special, and avoidant of correction with this approach.

Just to be clear, tone is just being used as a replacement for a voice command, and properly trained e-collar dogs respond to a voice command alone 99% of the time. But if they don’t, they are corrected for non-compliance, as is the tone recall trained dog. (If the training is done properly.) So tone recall trained dogs aren’t being corrected any less than voice command recall trained dogs, they’re just hearing a different sound to signal them to recall.

That all said, are there benefits to tone recall? Here’s a quick list of some pros:
-You can recall your dog from great distances where your voice might not reach.
-You can recall a single dog (if you have multiple dogs off-leash) with less chance of the other dogs responding to a name/recall command. But, if your dogs are close to each other you can still get command overlap as the others hear the tone and respond.
-It’s emotionally neutral. So if you struggle with getting frustrated or panicky it can help remove that component, delivering an identical signal every time regardless of the situation.
-If you’ve got your dog off-leash and are in area where other dogs might be as well, and if you have a situation where you want your dog(s) to get their butts back to you in a hurry but don’t want to attract attention from the other off-leash dogs, it’s a great surreptitious recall.
-You never have to raise your voice, and that’s appealing because you’re a lowkey cat. 😎

So it really depends on your needs. For the average owner doing your average off-leash recall, voice command, in my opinion, is more than sufficient. I personally wouldn’t recommend my clients have their dogs out of sight at truly great distances — too much risk/possible issues, and I’ve never felt the need to train it for my personal dogs or clients, because voice command has always been more than enough. But if any of the benefits on the above list sound appealing, or if you see any possible issues you could overcome with it, it’s easy enough to train.

Whatever way you decide to train your e-collar recall, just make sure the decisions aren’t based in thinking you’re somehow magically avoiding corrections — you’re not. Instead, make sure the choice is made based on what works best for you and your dog’s lifestyle rather than some perceived magic marketing no correction gimmick.

01/15/2025

Behavioral suppression is an absolutely critical component of life which enables us humans to live socially as harmoniously as possible.

We have laws, law enforcement, social pressure, and personal awareness of the consequences (both external and internal) when we deviate from what we know or have been taught is appropriate.

And while we might not agree on all of the rules/laws/norms, we have a clear understanding of them and what consequences we face when our behavior doesn’t align with them.

Our dogs depend on us to create the rules, the rule enforcement, build the awareness that consequences are tied to unwanted behaviors — and by doing so we create clarity for them as to how to behave in our world successfully, safely, and harmoniously.

And whether we like it or not, creating this reality for our dogs DOES involve behavioral suppression — from us — because our dogs absolutely won’t do this on their own… because they have no understanding of it.

That said, there’s a vast difference between comprehensive suppression of all that your dog is and how they enjoy life, and smart, healthy, measured suppression which helps them: be enjoyed, have bigger and more included lives, remain safe in an unsafe world, remain in their homes, stay out of shelters and avoid euthanasia.

While none of us enjoy suppressing our dog’s behavior, we’re fooling ourselves and doing our dogs a grotesque disservice when we withhold the necessary information they require to live in our human world successfully — in the same we’d be doing our children a grotesque disservice by not teaching them how to properly be in society.

Dogs who: bark endlessly, who engage in destructive behavior, who run away, who knock people down, who break out of crates, who drag owners around on walks, who blow up at every dog they see, who resource guard, who bite strangers and owners, who attack other animals, all require behavioral suppression… if we wish to help them.

Do they also need proper outlets for exercise, play, affection, and training for what we DO want? Of course. That should be terribly obvious. But it’s not a one way street of just fun, play, and “do this!”, it’s also about DO NOT DO THIS, EVER! AND HERE’S THE CONSEQUENCE FOR BREACHING THIS RULE!

For anyone grounded in reality, appropriate behavioral suppression is critical (and obvious) to helping our dogs flourish; but with our current cultural leanings towards viewing laws and rules — and punishment for their breaching — as tyrannical, oppressive, unhealthy power dynamics, this leaning has painted this crucial component of living well with our dogs, and our dogs living well with us, as something only the uncaring, unkind, unethical, and un-evolved engage in.

What a pity for these creatures who depend on us to properly guide them, and to do the hard stuff so they can live their very best lives.

01/14/2025

01/13/2025

For all those owners who allow their dogs to meet people and other dogs when they’re out and about and don’t know why their dogs go bananas when they see a person or dog, I hope this helps.

Dogs are amazing pattern readers, and easily become conditioned that something occurring predicts another thing occurring if it happens often enough. It’s why picking up your car keys, or walking towards the cupboard where their food is, or picking up their leash, or packing your suitcase, or answering the door after the doorbell goes off — causes an intense reaction.

It could be excitement, it could be anxiety, it could be sadness, it could be anything depending on what the “signal” predicts, and how your dog feels about it.

Same goes for your dog who is allowed to meet random people and dogs — and who takes great pleasure in it. If this sequence occurs often enough, it will begin to condition your dog to view people as a visual signal that predicts a party/arousal/intense emotional escalation.

You end up turning people and dogs into “doorbells”.

This is why you’ll hear almost all experienced trainers not engaging in this activity. (Of course there’s other considerations like creating negative outcomes from these interactions, but that’s a post for another day.) Most trainers, and astute owners are keenly aware that if this meet and greet activity is practiced enough, you’re going to have a dog who is struggling to hold it together when they see people and dogs — because you’ve conditioned your dog that the appearance of people or dogs predicts craziness.

Of course there are exceptions. (There are always exceptions.) There are chilled out, lowkey dogs who enjoy these interactions but who don’t lose it. And there are owners who only do this on rare occasions — and so the reactions are far less intense. But if you do this on the regular, and you have a dog who loses its sh*t when it occurs, you’re almost certainly setting you and your dog up for a lifetime of overly-aroused, reactive nuttiness when people and dogs come into the picture.

And if you don’t enjoy the behavior this creates in your dog, then I’d highly advise you change your approach, or at the very least, minimize it greatly. A doorbell that only predicts someone at the door 5-10% of the time is a far less insanity-inducing doorbell, so perhaps you can adjust your dog’s predictive powers by making things far less predictable. :)

01/05/2025

A good personal check in.

Are your rules actually rules — meaning valuable consequences occur if they’re not followed — or are they hopeful but empty suggestions — meaning the only consequence for not adhering to them is you getting frustrated, flustered, and angry?

If you don’t know how to enforce the rules, there’s plenty of info on this page and my YouTube (the good dog training) to guide you — but you’ll have to dig in and do the work.

If you do know how but find that knowledge emotionally unsavory, you’ll almost certainly find yourself and your dog continuously struggling.

01/03/2025

That pulling, chaotic, reactive walk that’s driving you crazy — it was created by way of countless moments of allowance of pushy, bratty, overly excited behavior that happened long before you ever hit the streets.

It’s like letting your kids be bratty, entitled monsters at home, because it’s not that big of a deal — and then heading out to a nice dinner and telling them they’d better behave.

Haha…

If you want a fighting chance at a nice, polite, enjoyable, and safe walk, it’s time to take a look at all the non-walk moments occurring between you and your dog and have an honest conversation with yourself about how it all looks.

While it’s possible, it’s wildly unlikely that you’ve got an amazingly well behaved dog in all other contexts, and yet your walk is a disaster. Everything matters, and everything is a conversation that either tells your dog there are rules and standards — and consequences for breaching them… or not.

If the walk is a mess, START with reversing/transforming the first 5 items on the above list — that’s a solid beginning. And then, when you’re ready to make some major positive changes, take a look at the final one, prepare yourself for a serious challenge, and then get to work.

12/22/2024

Can we really blame our dogs for the confusion when their entire world is enveloped by mixed massages?

Why mixed? Because we knowingly or unknowingly teach them that they and us precisely the same. And then we become upset when they respond to what we’ve taught them by challenging us, pushing us, disregarding us, stressing us, overwhelming us, and sometimes even injuring us.

I’m sorry, but if you’re going to teach your dog that you and they are the same — meaning the social structure, aka the differences between human and canine aren’t clearly articulated — you can’t be upset when they run with what you’ve taught them.

This isn’t a student issue, it’s a teacher issue.

PS, I know many bristle at the fact that I point out that there should be a clear distinction between dog and human — with the human in charge and above in status, and and the dog subordinate and below in status. Feel free to bristle away. But when you’re struggling with your dog, refer back to this post and attempt to digest it with an open mind. The answers to why you’re struggling are likely here when you’re ready to find them.

PPS, here’s the kicker — you can disagree with this all you like, and even discount it as invalid “old school” nonsense — just remember that makes one of you. 😉

12/20/2024

🤫 don’t tell the haters the dogs actually love being e collar trained and having off leash freedom 😉

It’s the best training tool that not only gives you an invisible leash— but has saved THOUSANDS of dogs from death row.

No, you don’t just slap it on your dog and start pressing buttons, you still need to train your dog.

And we have step by step courses on this so you never need to second guess yourself.

Right now our Green to Graduate course and Community membership are 50% off, so you can achieve off leash freedom, master your e collar skills, AND have a full year of follow up support from us!

This offer expires 12.31.

Comment “December” for the link and info 💯

11/25/2024

11/25/2024

Are you truly ready to change? We don’t ask this question lightly because we know how easy it is to say the word “yes.”

To say you’re willing to do anything and stop old habits is one thing, but to actually act upon those words is another. Change doesn’t happen without the real, hard, and sometimes “ugly” work.

How does this relate to dog training? Because we see it every day. We have owners who are struggling and at their wits end, while their dog is on their final chance.

Something has got to give. So what will it be?

Are you ready to become a real leader to your dog? To get your dog out of the bedroom and off the couch? To move your dog away and give it a correction when it breaks command to demand attention from you? Will you be emotionally vested in recognizing the signs and not letting your heart talk you out of doing the “mean” things?

Are you going to be firm, consistent, and disciplined even when things seem to be getting better, or will you let it all slide at the first sign of “good enough”? Are you in it for the long haul?

We see it every day. We see owners struggle when they don’t have to, but it’s also hard to train your own dog and do the stuff that takes actual work.

We’re not talking about the reps of obedience. we’re talking about the emotional work like holding your dog accountable and correcting unwanted behaviors.

So many people feel bad about this part of dog ownership, but it’s probably one of the most important.

If you want change—truly, honestly, deeply, want change, then you have to follow through with action to match it. Words are meaningless without the behavior to back them up.

Dog owners are 50% of the equation when it comes to how successful a training program is

So if you are ready for things to change with your dog…start paying attention to your own behavior as well.

11/23/2024

We’re fascinating creatures. The answers are all around us, and have been for the entirety of our lives. And yet, we’ll happily allow charlatans, selling us feel-good snake oil, to not only take our time, money, and hope, but to also take our dog’s quality of life, and perhaps their actual life as well.

And it will all occur under the guise of “kindness”, “empathy”, “care”, and “goodness”.

What seems to be missed over and over, is the distinction between superficial, ineffective, momentary, and selfish kindness, empathy, care, and goodness—over true, transformative, longterm, and selfless kindness, empathy, care, and goodness.

This is one of the consistent plagues of the human condition: the gravitation to what feels (and even seems) good now, regardless of longterm, unforeseen 2nd and 3rd order downstream consequences—versus what is difficult now, but creates truly positive longterm, 2nd and 3rd order consequences.

You can ignore, dismiss, and use some creative “reasoning” to sidestep the reality you personally know all too well in favor of doing what feels better/easy/superficially virtuous/selfishly rewarding, but as we all know deep down, this decision never leads anywhere actually positive.

If you’re struggling with your dog, take a look at your own life experiences and the wisdom you’ve gained from the positives and the negatives, and simply apply that wisdom to your choices of influences, trainers, tools, and beliefs. The answers are out there, but they’re hiding behind a reality which doesn’t operate from a place of pure pleasantness, never ending fun, easy feelings, and intellectually insulting nonsense like postive only/force-free training which obviously have no alignment with reality.

But you know that.

11/19/2024