This past week, Know Me and I had fun playing a new game, mimicry. For most dogs, my others included, it's not all that fun. They prefer to have someone explain what's going on, to help them learn a task. But Know Me loves watching people and he thought this was the best thing ever. Here are a couple of YouTube videos.

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There are many things that have informed the changes in the way I interact with, and teach my dogs. Success is not part of it. Honestly, I find that argument frustrating. I read endless discourse on either side of the force-free/balanced-correction based trainer discussion outlining in ever more detail with notations, links to research, videos of training, all 'proving' that one way or the other is going to yield the best results, that the other way will ultimately end in disaster of one sort or another. If it's competition training, then they push the best way to a winning dog. If it's pet training, the fear that doing it wrong will net you an aggressive or fearful or out of control animal is always lurking in the shadows.

In my experience, and I've got about 50 years of it, all of it works. I have very successfully taught dogs using correction based methods, using entirely free shaping, and using a wide variety of other techniques. I've used all manner of tools at least once, from plain harnesses to prong collars. These things work. The trainers who argue passionately about the way they train are not wrong. They are not making up the success they speak of.

Throughout my journey with dogs, I've continued to dig into who they are, how they think, what they feel. The last 25 years have brought such an explosion of science to back up what we all know, when we pay attention. Dogs are not that different from us. They have the ability to imagine, they understand who they are, they feel emotions. They care about us. They care about each other. They care about themselves. We can teach them things through free shaping, like a rat in a Skinner box, and they will learn that that's how we want to interact with them. We can teach them things through physical or verbal corrections and rewards, and they will learn that that is how we want to interact with them. They're fine with it. We've seen that for centuries. We've done these things and they're still here. But when we start with corrections, the dog will expect corrections. You'll be stuck in that loop and getting out of it will be hard. When we train a lot with food and without conversation, our dogs become accustomed to not being invited to share their ideas with us, and they also become accustomed to food being the currency with which we work, even though prior to this they were often happy to share with us without it.

We can change the dynamic, treat them as we would any other member of our family, take the time to get to know the individual and what their needs are, and our relationships will go in a different direction entirely. They all have different needs, wants and desires. They all have different ways of learning things and different things they enjoy. That does not mean we can't partake in the sports we love. All my dogs do agility and obedience because I love those things, and they also pay attention to me. They also want to do what I love.

I believe our dogs see us in themselves. They reflect they way we act toward them in the best way they know how. It behooves us to think about what it is we want reflected.