Contact, Links, & Other
If you need help solving a dog problem, my first piece of advice is to search this site thoroughly for the answers. I get many e-mails and forum posting asking for information that is already available on this site.
If you have an urgent or severe dog problem, I recommend that you find a qualified local trainer or behaviorist. Receiving advice in person is always better than e-mail.
I would love to have the time to answer every question personally, but sadly I don’t. I work full time in addition to training dogs and following other interests, so my internet time is fairly limited. I have retired from training professionally. At this time I am not able to respond to requests for dog training advice.
Adding your link to this site
I do not operate a link exchange program. You can, however, receive a link to your site by writing a high-quality, informative article on a dog training topic and grant me permission to use it on this site. At the base of that article, you can include a link to your website and any other reasonable information about yourself and your services. The article can be something you have already written for your website, but I will not accept articles that are listed in online article syndication databases.
Submitting articles
If you would like to suggest that I add articles on a certain topic or problem, feel free to e-mail me and I will do my best to track them down or write them. If you have an article on the web that you would like me to link to, or have written a “paper” article that you would like to have posted, please let me know. I also welcome suggestions of books or videos to review. I WELCOME added information. Please do not be put off by the following guidelines; I wrote them to save everyone time and avoid hurt feelings.
I look for the following when deciding to post an article: It should contain enough information to actually help a dog owner teach an exercise or solve a problem; It should be written in clearly understandable terms, so that someone who has never owned or trained a dog before could follow it; the training method should be effective and reflect a clear understanding of dog behavior and learning theory; and the training method should be positive and humane, as well as easy to follow.
Police canine, Schutzhund, or protection training articles are especially welcomed.
Submitting dog training books and videos for review
If you have a book, video, or other media that you don’t see listed on my “Training Books” page, please send me a copy and I would be glad to review it. Before doing so, please look at the current content of that page and make sure you think it would fit in. There are many excellent dog books and videos out there; this listing is a “best of the best” page, aimed at the general pet-owning public. There is also a section on books for dog trainers and a section on police/protection books. In order to be listed, the item must be one of the most useful and clearly understandable works available on a given topic. It must promote the most effective and humane training methods available for its given topic.
Caveats and addendums:
This is strictly a training and behavior site; please do not submit information on herbs, psychics, massage, aromatharapy, or similar topics. Also, I don’t promote the “dominance as the root of all behavior problems” theory, nor do I recommend Alpha Rolls, scruff shakes, or similar techniques. I rarely advocate punishment as a solution to behavior problems.
This is a positive reinforcement site. I fully acknowledge that not all problems can not be solved by positive reinforcement alone, and I do not claim to use strictly positive reinforcement myself. However, I believe that positive solutions can be found for the vast majority of training problems. For many reasons, I feel we as dog trainers should not promote aversive techniques to the public. In the hands of the wrong person, they can ruin a dog’s life.
If I decide not to list something, please do not take it as an insult. I’m quite human, and as such I tend to reject things that I don’t agree with or that don’t make sense to me personally. That doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable or “right.” Thanks for your contributions!
For expert witness requests, book or product review requests, article reprint requests, and article submissions, email jetflair@gmail.com
Address for shipping books and products for review:
Jessi Clark-White
PO Box 367
Veneta, OR 97487
My question is what would I need to do to become a trainer of police dogs.
Thank you.
Davida Thomas
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:10 pmHello,
My name is Mary Pickering. My husband serves in the military and we are currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Since I arrived to Okinawa, I’ve been volunteering at the Okinawan-American Animal Rescue Society, a non-profit, all volunteer organization approved by the Base Command in 2004.
OAARS works to rescue and pamper abandoned, mistreated or lost animals in Okinawa, Japan. Our volunteers foster the animals at their homes and we also have a shelter that unfortunately will be closing this coming June for lack of funding. Please check out our website: www.oaars.com
The reason I am writing is because I would like to set up a training day for our dogs. I believe that if we offer trained animals people are more likely to keep them. I have some knowledge about training dogs (I trained my Labrador and he is awesome) but I was wondering if you could give some tips or recommend a reading that could help me with this idea.
What I would like to do is to have a group training twice a month. We would invite all our foster parents to bring the dogs and as a group work in teaching them basic commands, solve behavior problems, etc.
Any ideas or guidance that you could provide, I would greatly appreciated it.
Look forward to hearing from you,
Mary (Mady) Pickering Volunteer Coordinator OAARS
February 17th, 2008 at 10:38 am