I’m finally getting a taste of my own Train the Trainer medicine: After not having a dog for about twenty five years, I’m now on the receiving end of a unique Train-the-Trainer program, if you know what I mean.

Quick explanation: For the past four or five years I’ve responded with an unequivocal “no” every time my wife has expressed interest in getting a dog. But with the persistence of a kid in a candy store she never gave up.  :-)   And I’m glad.

Long story short, we went to the humane society last month and fell in love with a very calm and well-behaved black lab/beagle mix. First it was us doing the training. Within hours we had to start training our new dog to a) stay off the furniture, b) know that the OUTside of the house was his toilet, and c) not eat our cockatiel.

Then there’s Sit. Come. Heel. Don’t jump on people. Stay. Shake. Etc., etc. But we realized we were pretty out of the loop in terms of dog training, so we went online and started looking for a place we could get some training for ourselves.

Thankfully, we found a guy named Ed Frawley, owner of Leerburg Kennels in Wisconsin. This guy has 35+ years of experience training over 160 litters of mostly German Shepherds (including many world champions), and he has what I think is the best approach to dog training I’ve ever seen. We read his e-books, listened to his podcasts, and then bought several of his training DVDs.

And now I’m getting some top-notch training in how to train dogs.

(And I’m going for more walks, too.)

Great to be learning some good stuff on dog training.  Yeah, it seems like there’s probably a good joke in there somewhere, but it’s probably best if I just leave it alone. 

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Filed in Training, Train the Trainer