You CAN teach old dogs new tricks!

Coming from almost 12 years of obedience training, the term operant conditioning was foreign to me two years ago.  Free shaping canine behaviors coupled with operant training methods....is ALL about motivation and teaching a dog to offer behaviors.

The old "tried and true" methods of training with which I am all too familiar are without a doubt successful in creating a well behaved well trained dog.  However,  the results are a dog that will wait to be told what to do.  The dog has been taught that making mistakes is not acceptable, therefore it will only perform as it's told to do.  In contrast...an operantly conditioned dog isn't afraid of making mistakes because there aren't consequences.  There are only opportunities to learn what works and what doesn't to earn a reward.   Operantly conditioning a dog builds confidence, it builds drive and it builds relationships.  I'm finding that out, and I'm also figuring out that this is part of why Bailey entered my life unexpectedly and unplanned when he did...because he had some very important things to teach me.

 If more people made the effort to learn from their dogs rather than just expecting their dogs to learn from them we'd have some pretty amazing revelations happening around us.