People often ask me why a veterinarian would become involved in dog training.
I practiced veterinary medicine full time for years and trained my own dogs as my hobby. As I became more serious about training my dogs, I studied and learned more and more about animal behavior, learning theory, and science based behavior modification.
What I learned both excited and depressed me. It was exciting to study the elegant and precise methods available to train animals. It was depressing because I saw the local “training classes” using rough and ineffective methods and then blaming the dogs when those methods failed.
As a veterinarian, I would see those dogs come into the veterinary clinic either out of control or slinking around in fear. The owners were angry and frustrated because they had “tried everything”, and the dogs were still misbehaving.
I finally decided that someone had to help these people and these dogs. So, in 1992 , we started Puppy Love training. In those days, we were really considered radical because almost no one in this area was using positive reinforcement or clicker training. But the methods worked and dogs learned how to behave, and people learned how to communicate with and train their own dogs.
Now, nearly 20 year and thousands of dogs later, I still get a thrill out of helping someone learn to communicate with their dog. I love seeing the “lightbulb” moment when the dog understands what we are telling him.
Today, there are quite a few trainers in town, many of whom learned to train here at Puppy Love. I think that is great. The more people we can educate about the science of animal training and the more people we can get to use positive reinforcement, the better for the dogs.
