I don’t know how good a mother I was when my children were growing up. How are those things measured, and who measures them? It is patently unfair to ask one’s children, if they’re even moderately polite they will say something close to what one wants to hear. Did the kids turn out the way we wanted? That might mean that they might have survived despite our failures, because there’s so much else at play.

And so it is with puppies, the vast majority of them turn out fine regardless of how many mistakes we make along the way.

There’s a strong and pervasive myth, however, with both children and puppies, that what creates calm, well behaved, hard working beings is to be raised with ‘discipline’, strict rules, and structure. That being relaxed is a sure road to delinquent children and biting dogs.

It’s become common to the point of almost being cliché for people to state, when talking about their service dogs, or other dogs who should be demonstrating an exceedingly high level of good behavior in public, that ‘they aren’t robots’. And this is true. Dogs have bad days just like the rest of us, dogs make mistakes and forget what they’re doing. Dogs are not perfect.

Often these different types of comments are coming from the same people. They believe that strong discipline and rigidity are going to create incredibly well behaved creatures, then they justify slipping off the pedestal by reminding us of the obvious, that dogs are not rigid pieces of metal that can be ordered about at whim.

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Know Me is out and about a lot. Not infrequently, people remark that he is SO well behaved, so easy to handle, so ‘good’. At events where all the dogs are, or should be at his level of training, people specifically mention to me that he is the best trained dog they’ve seen all day. This happened with See Ya, this happened with Kiss, this happened with Stamp. Whether on shoots as actors, or at work as service dogs, this was something I frequently heard.

The way I raise my dogs might make some people absolutely cringe with it’s lack of corrections, rigidity, and cues. My puppies don’t learn ‘no’. Think about it, I wouldn’t be able to name a dog Know if they did! My dogs don’t learn ‘leave it’ or ‘off’. While I don’t believe that it’s possible for anyone to live in a world in which a dog never receives a correction of any kind, it’s not a common occurrence in our house. Corrections that are rare have a strong impact, and as such are incredibly useful and valuable when they do happen.

They also are not, as some trainers would have you believe, constantly being fed treats to achieve compliance. We often don’t use treats at all, to the extent that I have been berated by others for not rewarding enough. Because they don’t consider joy and play rewards.

My dogs, like my children, have been raised very thoughtfully, and with a lot of care, to become part of my community, and to offer what I consider good behavior because it’s something socially valued.

There is no single right way to do this, but by gosh, don’t let anyone tell you that the only way to have a well mannered dog is to bully them into it.

And yes, I do have a complete puppy raising course. This is how I do it, complete with videos of Know Me learning every step of the way.

or the whole puppy bundle