Greetings from CA!

[Jemster]

Hello,

My name's Michelle and I live in southern California, closer to AZ than the coast. I have two dogs, one purebred Dalmatian and the other a Dalmatian mix. They are both spayed and as far as ages go, the purebred it 12 years-old and the mix is 5.5 years-old. I have become a convert to the all-positive method of training after seeing a professional "trainer" use remote collars and even saw his assistant use a cattle prod during one training session. His excuse was that the dogs that he used the collars on were never afrad of him because of the timing of the corrections. While I agree that correct timing is absolutely essential in training I do not agree with using pain to get the dog to do what you want them to do. I left and never used him again. Of course, people still think he's a good trainer because they only see the results and not the methods that he employs. *sigh*

Thanks for reading and I hope to learn a lot here and maybe contribute something too!

Michelle

[emmabeth]

Hi, welcome to the forums.

My word a cattle prod! Thats disgusting.... well done for having the strength to walk away and not be seduced by the apparent 'results' !

I hope you will find the forums useful and interesting and join in!

[Jemster]

Hi, welcome to the forums.

My word a cattle prod! Thats disgusting.... well done for having the strength to walk away and not be seduced by the apparent 'results' !

I hope you will find the forums useful and interesting and join in!

Thanks! Thank goodness he didn't use it on my dog but I sure feel sorry for the dog he DID use it on. I'm really interested in becoming a trainer myself - not only because I love dogs and want to help them and their owners, but to give people alternatives to trainers like this. Right now I'm conditioning my dogs to the clicker and from there the skyu's, as they say, is the limit!

[emmabeth]

Im not even sure if the sky IS the limit with clicker training.... theres just no telling how far you can go with it!

[mustlovdoggs]

Welcome, from my two Cockers and me.