When I started dog training many moons ago, the field was based mainly on the now-debunked dominance theory. The current principles applied to dog training were just mere whispers of what was to come. However, I think this goes to show how far dog training is behind other forms of behavior modification and learning. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen any zookeepers or marine mammal trainers apply corrections to their animal students and expect anything other than certain death. Why do we seem to think that dogs are different than any other mammal on the planet?

My entire life I have only owned rescued dogs with histories of unknown circumstances and problematic issues. All of my dogs essentially came to me “broken”. They all came with a plethora of problem behaviors and were “project” dogs. After working with rescue after rescue and seeing more of the same, I decided it was time for me to step outside of my comfort zone and purchase a dog from a responsible breeder instead.