Train Your Dog

THE COMMANDS THAT WILL BE TAUGHT ARE:

Walking correctly and obediently next to you.

Returns to you immediately when he/she is untied whatever the situation.

Lie down/sit and stay wherever you need and for time you need.

Go to his place and stay there.

It is also possible to teach your dog more advanced commands such as lying down at a distance, walking on foot without the leash...

I specialize in dog behavior problems.

I only give private lessons, as no two owners have the same expectations, the same needs, or the same learning difficulties. I put at your disposal my 30 years of professional experience.

I give dog training lessons all over the United States and worldwide.

Prices on request

How my lessons work

My work has three parts — distinct, but inseparable:

1. Understanding your dog. I teach you the essentials of canine ethology and behavior you need to communicate properly with your dog. From them come the rules of life to put in place at home: they're what give you a balanced dog and a harmonious relationship with him. This part also prepares obedience, and determines how far it will go.

2. Getting obeyed. I teach you how to make your dog obey you — so he can come with you everywhere, stay calm, and obey you reliably whenever you need it, in every situation of daily life.

3. Solving behavior problems. Once that foundation is in place — the rules of life and real obedience — I use it to solve your dog's behavior problems: reactivity, resource guarding, separation anxiety, aggression toward people or other dogs, fear, house soiling, barking, jumping on people, and chewing. See each behavior problem in detail →

I don't use treats, and I never use pain — prong collars, shock collars and the like are completely out.

Why I don't use treats

A treat only works when nothing more interesting has your dog's attention, and it does nothing for the behavioral side of training — that's why I don't rely on it. There's more on the reasoning, the research behind it, and what I've observed over thirty years on the Training Without Treats page.

My training method

Training method = leadership + positive reinforcement + discomfort.
Leadership is the foundation of obedience — without it, there's no logical reason at all for your dog to obey you.

I didn't arrive at this formula from a textbook. It comes from my years of observing dogs: when you watch them sort themselves out with each other, long enough and closely enough, two of these three ingredients keep showing up on their own — leadership, and discomfort. Positive reinforcement is the exception: it's not something dogs do with each other, so that part comes specifically from the human-dog relationship. Here's what each one actually means, and why none of them works alone.

If he doesn't perceive you as the one who decides, why would he listen to you? He could obey you for two other reasons, but neither is effective nor respectful. The first is a treat — but its effectiveness is very limited in everyday life, nor does it solve any behavioral troubles. The second is pain (prong collars, shock collars…) — I completely reject the use of that in training. I've worked on explosive-detection dog training alongside a commander of the RAID, the French National Police's special forces unit, and with category 1 and 2 "dangerous" dogs under French law — reliability in those settings isn't optional, and it's never come from fear.

Leadership doesn't just make your dog obey you consistently: it's the only foundation that's both effective and respectful of your dog's nature, which is necessary for his balance. You can get a dog to obey without being dominant over him — but it won't hold up, and it won't be good for his wellbeing, because it won't be coherent. Looked at through the lens of a dog's education as a coherent whole, dominance and obedience are, in practice, almost synonymous: two sides of the same coin. A dog is meant to submit to a dominant's demands — but not to a subordinate's. That's not a theory — watch any pack of dogs that have nothing to prove to anyone, and you'll see it for yourself.

When you dominate your dog — when you address him to get him to obey — he'll look at you to find out what you expect of him; in other words, you have his attention. Otherwise, he'll keep focusing on whatever interests him and ignore you.

Positive reinforcement: the moment a dog obeys me, he's warmly praised and generously petted. For obedience, we always use a soft, warm, encouraging voice. That is positive reinforcement — and I use it every single time. I'm not against it; I've used it for thirty years. What I'm against is the trend of treating it as the only tool that should exist.

To understand more precisely what's really happening in my method, the petting and praise aren't just a simple association of "I obey = I get petted." Treating petting as positive reinforcement assumes petting is always pleasant for a dog — which isn't true: some dogs don't particularly enjoy it, and many sometimes refuse it outright. But when you dominate your dog, your petting inevitably takes on a very particular flavor: a mark of attention from the boss, which is deeply rewarding. A dog never appreciates petting as much as when it comes from a dominant — he then receives it very calmly, often half-closing his eyes.

Your petting only takes on its full meaning, and reaches its purpose, if you're perceived as the leader — only then does it really become "positive reinforcement." Otherwise, your dog might not even pay attention to it.

Discomfort. Discomfort is not pain, and I want to stress that point. Yes, you do need to introduce something unpleasant when a dog disobeys if you want real, effective obedience. Without discomfort, it's impossible to get obedience in every circumstance — and real obedience isn't a luxury. In the work I've done — bite-prevention programs in schools, zootherapy with inmates, dogs that have to hold a recall around traffic or around other dogs — it's often what keeps a dog, or the people around him, safe.

So what degree of discomfort? That's directly tied to your level of leadership. If you clearly and unambiguously dominate your dog, the level of discomfort needed is slight. If you don't dominate your dog, or only partly, that level has to be higher.

When you dominate your dog unambiguously, it isn't really the discomfort itself — the unpleasant physical sensation — that stops him from disobeying. Producing that discomfort is a reminder to your dog: "Remember, I'm the one who decides." For a submissive dog, the level of discomfort required will be much lower.

If some dogs appear to obey very well even though they hold all the power at home, it's because they have a very weak temperament. So why would you even need to dominate that type of dog? Because it's fundamental to their balance.

The more temperament a dog has, the more directly leadership affects his level of obedience — and across sixteen countries and every kind of dog, from family pets to working and street dogs, that's the one pattern that's never once failed to hold.