I absolutely LOVE clicker training because it’s a FAST, EASY, and FUN way to teach your dog — it can help solve obedience problems and shape behaviors quickly and easily. It’s a method I’ve used time and time again during my 17 years of training dogs, and I use it with my own dogs and the dogs of my clients with great success.

Here’s a video that explains everything.

Just click here or on the graphic below to watch the video.

Clicker Training for Dogs

Beginning on January 1st and running for the entire month of January, new dog “parents” and veteran dog owners alike can visit http://newyearnewdog.yourbestdogever.com for daily lessons on how to train your dog to learn 13 vital obedience and behavior skills that are the foundation for raising a well-behaved dog.

You can read about why I’m doing this in the post below, or read the press release describing everything by clicking here.

I can’t wait to get started on January 1st. Please register early so you don’t miss a single day of training!

I’m really hoping you can all help me get the word out about this. It’s going to do a LOT of good for a LOT of dogs and a LOT of people.

You can help by spreading the word on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, bookmarking it on sites like Digg and Delicious, and emailing it to your friends, family and anyone else you know who could benefit from it.

Here’s the scoop…

As dog lovers, we all know that the tradition of the “Christmas puppy” is, despite the pleas of many experts, alive and well.

What this means is that this year tens of thousands of puppies and dogs will be given as holiday gifts.

Now, I may not agree with this tradition. And you may not either. We know that introducing a new pet into your home during the holidays simply adds more stress for everyone — including the dog.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still very common.

So, while just about every expert agrees that this is not something they would recommend people do, the facts are the facts, and I want to do what I can to help.

Statistics show that a large percentage of dogs who are brought into a new home as “gifts” during the holidays will wind up abandoned and in shelters just a few months, or even weeks, after the “excitement” dies down.

And most of the dogs who suffer that fate wind up there simply because their new “parents” lacked the knowledge and skill to know how to handle common challenges that come with any new addition to the family.

So what I want to do throughout the month of January is to show these new owners how easy it can be to solve common obedience problems.

And I want to show you how dogs THINK, so that you can understand their behavior and STOP problems before they ever start. I want to show you how to create a lifelong bond with your dog, so that the two of you wind up truly becoming best friends.

During the entire month of January, for 31 straight days, I’m going to be releasing free dog training articles, demos, tutorials and videos.

If you need any help at all training your dog, this will help.

AND…

If you know anyone who needs help, then this is for them.

Anyway, I said I would just give you a link to a press release we posted about the “1,000 Dog Challenge,” but when I start talking about topics like this I find it hard to stop.

Please, click here to read the press release with all the details and then do what you can to help spread the word.

The dogs are counting on us.

You can get started now just by using the little “sharing” buttons in this post to share this on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Dig, StumbleUpon, and many other services. Thank you so much for your help!

I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me over the years and asked if there’s a “secret” that will help them train a puppy the right way from the beginning.

I love getting that question for a couple of reasons, but one of the main ones is that I love to see people who want to get off on the right foot with their dogs, rather than waiting until the dog gets older and bad patterns of behavior have become a habit.

That’s not to say that you can’t also train older dogs — of course you can. But there’s something special about being able to start “fresh” with a puppy that makes things so much easier from the get-go.

But whether we’re talking about training your adult dog or training a puppy, there’s one simple “secret” that applies in every case.

And when you learn this one secret and put it to practical use, it makes training your puppy amazingly easy and stress-free.

To discover this “secret” and how it can make puppy training easier, let’s back up and talk about how puppies are raised in their natural environment — the pack.

Dogs are born in a litter that immediately establishes pack rank and behaviors.

So puppies learn from the time they’re born that there’s a natural order that must be followed.  From the moment they’re born, they’re learning rules for survival and leadership that must be followed by every member of the pack.

We should all be thankful for this natural “social heirarchy” that all puppies — and adult dogs — are drawn to follow and respect, because it makes our jobs so much easier when it comes time to train them.

In fact, it’s this social hierarchy that creates the fuel that powers the number one secret to successful puppy training, which is that to solve puppy training problems, to live with a happy and obedient puppy (and eventually adult dog) who does what you want the first time and every time, it’s necessary that you dust off your natural “powers of attraction” and become the leader that your puppy wants to follow.

Why is Leadership So Important When You Train a Puppy?

You see, it’s your ability to tap into this pre-established inner code of dog behavior — the same code your puppy learned from his littermates and mother — that makes all the difference in how your puppy views you and his role within your home.

Puppy training becomes easy when you understand what motivates your puppy to listen to you and truly want to please you. You can’t buy that kind of relationship for any amount of money, but you can earn it.

This is the basic secret to becoming your dog’s best friend AND to achieving personal puppy training success and real happiness

I like to sum up this approach with two simple words…”Follow Me!”

So, what’s your attitude? Are you a leader? Or a follower?

Have you avoided problems or challenges with your puppy because you just don’t know what to do? This doesn’t happen when you’re acting in the leadership role with your puppy.

You see, a leader can take a stand without turning it into a confrontation — whether that’s over who leads who on walks, who controls food, or who controls what’s acceptable to chew.

A leader wins without fighting because when you understand the dynamics of pack behavior, you know what to do almost instinctively.

But the catch is, a dog can’t treat you like a leader if you don’t act like one. You need to stand out from the pack. And how do you do it is to go back to the two simple words I talked about above — “Follow Me!”

Every adult dog and every puppy follows the leader of the pack. As leader, your dog pays attention to you. Your dog looks to you for fun, help, guidance, safety, and information.

Before your dog runs out the door, she looks to you to see if she has your permission.

If your dog barks, when you say quiet, the dog stops barking.

If you don’t have that kind of influence with your dog, then chances are he doesn’t yet respect you as leader.

But don’t worry, because you CAN learn what to do. And it’s not hard at all.

Why a Leadership Approach is the Fastest and Easiest Way to Train a Puppy

Finding time to train your puppy isn’t easy. In fact, if you’re like most people, it probably gets more difficult every day. But the neat thing about the “follow me” leadership approach is that you don’t have to add more “stuff” to your life. You just change how you do something.

I have lots of examples here on the blog of things you can do to establish yourself as pack leader with your dog (and my full online training course covers this in extensive detail), but here are a few quick things you can do…

For example, always go through the door first ahead of your dog. Don’t walk around your dog who’s lying in the hallway, instead have the dog move out of your way. As I said, there are other simple techniques you can use, but those two can get you started right now, today!

When you put the ideas into practice you’ll see direct results in your day-to-day dealings with your puppy. In fact, the approach is so simple that you can learn it and forget it and yet it will become part of what you do naturally and effortlessly, because there are only a few steps to the whole system!

And what is so amazing is that you can laugh at your former worries and challenges about your dog’s behavior when you follow this simple approach, because you will settle differences quickly and move forward to get your point across without losing your cool.

And perhaps the best part is…your puppy will REALLY LISTEN to you!

Here’s Something to Try…

As part of my full online course that you can take for free for a full month, you get a free dog training audiobook called For the Love of a Dog: What Dogs Need from the People they Love.

In the audiobook, you’ll learn valuable skills and insights that you can apply immediately. And the best part is it’s easy to do.

Dog training is simple when you know what to do. And frankly, dog training is the only subject you can’t fake.

Does the dog come when you call, or does the dog and ignore you and run away?

In the audiobook alone you’ll get practical, how-to information that you can put to work right now with your own dog or puppy — that means tips, techniques, specific how-to’s, and strategies that will have an impact on your dog’s behavior today.

And the best part about all of this is this…

Your dog will love you for it!

I promise.

If you’d like to get the free audiobook, please click here for the details.

Enjoy!

I love it when people ask why I use dog clicker training to teach dogs. Now, obviously I can’t teach you EVERYTHING about clicker training in one little blog post, but what I can do is give you a short introduction to the method. (I’m preparing a FULL clicker training course as we speak, and that will be available shortly. So stay tuned!)

But whenever people ask me about clicker training, it gives me the chance explain some basic dog training principles, such as how using behavior-contingent rewards makes the right things easy, and the wrong things hard.

Because I can shape a behavior, it allows me to pair a click with a treat so that it teaches a dog the exact moment that a specific behavior earns a reward.

It demonstrates the idea that leader controls food, and compels me the teacher to pay attention to detail.

Using food as a reward is a real hot button issue for some people, because they confuse the idea of a behavior-contingent food reward with a bribe.

They think that food is used to bribe the dog.

However, a click/treat is never a bribe. It’s a paycheck!

As I wrote in The Tao of Puppies: How to Raise a Good Dog Without Really Trying, a click/treat is an “exact moment in now.” It immediately tells the dog that a specific physical action is correct.

The problem with giving a dog a friendly pat, or saying “good boy” as a way to reward positive behavior, is that by the time you get the words “good boy” out of your mouth, or put your hand down for a friendly pat, the specific behavior that you want to reward has altered.

To get the best results your timing is very important. You need to click/treat at the exact moment when the behavior occurs. That way, your dog knows what he did to earn the click/treat and — here’s the key — he can repeat it!

If there is too big a delay between the behavior and the click/treat, a dog gets confused.

But by paying attention to the small things, big behaviors can happen quickly and easily.

I’ve already posted a video demonstrating some of these techniques (you can find that here: dog pulling on leash), but I thought I’d follow that up with a written guide explaining some of the things you see in the video.

If you’re one of those dog owners who has to deal with the incredibly frustrating behavior of a dog who refuses to listen to you on your walks — who pulls on the leash until you feel like your arm will be pulled off, rather than simply walking quietly by your side, then this post is for you!

First we need to make something clear. A dog who pulls on his leash is a sign that the dog believes he is  in control and that you’re simply there to follow his leadership. So they’ll pay attention to all kinds of distractions during your walks — other dogs, kids on bikes, skateboarders, etc…basically everything else that’s going on around him instead of you.

While it’s very common, it’s also very simple to fix. Here are a few ways to do this…
1. Use a Pack Leader Harness. One of the things you may not realize is that just about every collar will actually encourage your dog to pull harder on his leash.

Instead of a typical collar, a choke chain, or a prong collar, try a different method such as a Pack Leader Harness. This type of harness fits in exactly the right way around your dog’s body and applies pressure where you need it in order to focus the dog’s attention back on the handler.

You can easily find this type of harness on the Internet. Just do a quick search on Google and you’ll find places where you can order it.

2. Learn what you can about training with a clicker. Clickers are a great tool, kind of like the duct tape of dog training tools. It can be very helpful in eliminating a wide range of problem behaviors, so I highly suggest you at least look into this method of training.

Simply put, the dog starts to expect something positive when he hears the click. The great thing about this is that you can train your dog to instantly focus on you whenever he hears that clicker sound.

We don’t have a tremendous amount of space in this article to go through the ins and outs of clicker training, but there are plenty of resources where you can learn the basics.

A clicker is useful in correcting leash pulling, because the sound will redirect a dog’s attention away from the distraction and back on you.

3. Food rewards. All dog owners know that food has the power to change the behavior of your dog. When using treats to stop a dog’s leash pulling problem, what you basically want to do is introduce the food to your dog, and then let the dog use his naturally powerful sense of smell to direct his attention and his movements in the direction you want.

Those are three very simple fixes for the problem. Again, you can watch and see how these techniques work by watching the video I mention above. But for those of you who prefer a written step-by-step guide, I hope this helps as well!