Search Results: Dog Training

For the Love of a Dog Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend “A marvelous book that everybody who loves dogs should own.” -Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation “[McConnell] sheds new light on the emotional lives of animals.” – The Washington Post “A wonderful book…Fine, balanced, charming, it is sure to appeal…

Do you have a dog who isn’t good meeting other dogs when on leash? If so, you’ll not be surprised that a recent blog post on how to stop uninvited dogs from approaching your own got 129 comments and reached 352,783 people on Facebook.   Wow. That’s compelling. In some ways, I’m not surprised. My…

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Meet Theo & Kimberly Found by the dog catcher, running on the highway in New Jersey, Theo was an eight month old whippersnapper when I first met him at the shelter in Old Bridge, New Jersey where he’d languished, un-adopted for over three months.  Though he was hampered by lack of training and the security…

  August 26th is National Dog Day! I know many of us celebrate our dogs everyday, but here are five additional ways to consider spending this special holiday… 1. Get out and play: Enjoy the day with your dog(s)! My favorite game to play with Willie is “Find It”. Start by hiding your dog’s favorite…

August 17, 2026 Size Matters (When Using Treats as Reinforcement) What helps an animal learn a new behavior fastest? Standard practice has assumed that learners need a large number of trials to learn a new behavior, and given the numbers of repetitions required, each reward, usually food, is small. In other words, lots of tiny…

Yup, it’s that time of year when the leaping, crotch-sniffing, cat poop-eating dog that you just rescued from a puppy mill is about to meet Aunt Polly, the only member of the family who is terrified of dogs. Or maybe you’re about to have guests who hate dogs, even your perfectly behaved ones. No matter what…

The Other End of the Leash Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs “Vivid anecdotes and keen insights… a wonderful book… [that] exudes wisdom and passion throughout.” – Bark Magazine “Warm and informative, The Other End of the Leash teaches us to bridge some differences and to honor others.” – Dog Fancy “This is…

It’s never too late to go back to basics! Family Friendly Dog Training is the perfect resource to help your clients, customers, or adopters deal with the most common behavior issues. We all know how serious tiny behavior problems can become—help the animals at both ends of the leash by providing steps for healthy, effective…

October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month! My rescued dog, Tootsie, and I have been celebrating all month on my Facebook page, but there’s still plenty of time to help homeless dogs. This issue is currently more important than ever, given all the tragedies that have disrupted dogs and their families around the country. Here is…

It’s never too late to go back to basics! Family Friendly Dog Training is the perfect resource to help your clients, customers, or adopters deal with the most common behavior issues. We all know how serious tiny behavior problems can become—help the animals at both ends of the leash by providing steps for healthy, effective…

From the Introduction: Good Puppy Owner! Goooood Puppy Owner! How clever of you to start now on your puppy’s education! You should feel good because you are caring and committed enough to take responsibility for your new dog’s welfare. As you know, there’s more to your puppy’s well-being than physical health; your dog’s behavior will…

Away to Me Trisha’s debut mystery novel.A woman. A dog. A murder. “Away To Me has it all: amazing canines, a flawed, funny, compelling heroine, unrelenting suspense…” -Cat Warren, NYT bestselling author of What the Dog Knows “Away To Me is like All Creatures Great & Small meets Agatha Christie-only with more glorious writing, and…

Years ago I watched two men try to turn a panicked cow around by yelling “Turn around! Turn around!” The cow’s foot was about to slip into a gap, and she was at risk of breaking her leg. The cow, having not been trained to “turn around” on cue, tried even harder to go the…

  Somewhere, in the depths of my closet, is a photo of Cosby, a St. Bernard I used to own, pooping in front of a sign that says “No Dumping.” I thought of it because recently several people have called about house training problems. Winter weather can make it more difficult for dogs to eliminate…

The Education of Will Healing a Dog, Facing My Fears, Reclaiming My Life “McConnell gives a voice to those who can’t speak in words and provides hope for fearful animals everywhere.” -Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human  and Animals in Translation “Wisdom earned in the hardest places, dog and human, brings with it a carrying…

Author, Speaker, Animal Behaviorist MORE ABOUT PATRICIA Your dog is begging you to read this! A classic, now in thirteen languages. READ MORE The all-new, fully-updated version of this beloved classic is now available! READ MORE A powerful memoir about dogs, love, trauma, and redemption. READ MORE Stories, science, and advice about the emotional lives…

The Puppy Primer The Puppy Primer, Patricia’s beloved guide to raising a puppy, is now all-new and fully-updated! “We give The Puppy Primer to all of our Puppy Day School students because it is the next best thing to having a trainer in their living room.” – Kelly Elvin, TipTopTraining, 
Kalamazoo, MI “The Puppy Primer…

How Dogs Can Make You Healthier (it’s not what you think!)   We all know that our relationship with dogs can do good things for our health. Just petting a dog can decrease our blood pressure, or allow us to heal faster from injury. And, of course, walking with our dogs is good exercise, which is also a…

Getting Involved in Animal Assisted Interventions Pet Partners held their 2017 conference on “Professionalizing the Passion” earlier this month, and I was honored to give the keynote address. Pet Partners provides certification, training, and support for volunteer animal and handler teams in Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI), including Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT), Animal Assisted Activities (AAA),…

I have to give myself chocolate when I leave on a trip, because I find it so hard to say goodbye to my dogs. But I’m not the only one who suffers when being separated from someone I love. Separation anxiety (SA) can be a serious problem and dogs who suffer from it may panic…

We’re wrapping up the 7th anniversary celebration of Love Has No Age Limit’s publication, what a great time to review three of the most important things to remember when bringing a new dog into the home: #1: Patience! Just because a dog isn’t a puppy anymore, doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t have a lot…

Much of our attention on canine behavior has focused on visual signals – and given their importance in the behavior and training of domestic dogs, that’s a good thing. However, the world of sound – how dogs use it and how it affects them – is extremely important in maintaining their wellbeing and responsiveness to…

Patricia is known worldwide as an expert on canine training and behavior and for her engaging and knowledgeable books, speeches, and seminars. She is the author of the much-acclaimed books The Other End of the Leash (published in 14 languages), For the Love of a Dog, and her memoir, The Education of Will. Her debut…

  We’re celebrating the 7th anniversary of publishing Love Has No Age Limit: Welcoming an Adopting Dog into Your Home! Since its inception, over 100,000 copies have gone home with adopted dogs and their new families. This book has the answers, from what to do (and not do) the first day, week and month, why…

Questions About Purchases Who do I contact if I have a question about my order? Order fulfillment is now being done by our good friends at Dogwise in Wenatchee, WA. We are confident that they will continue the same level of customer-friendly service that we have done our best to provide. Nothing else will change:…

Introducing ‘Away To Me’ the first mystery novel from best-selling author Patricia McConnell! ORDER NOW! “Away to Me is like All Creatures Great & Small meets Agatha Christie-only with more glorious writing, and more border collies!” -Sy Montgomery, NYT bestselling author of What the Chicken Knows “Away to Me has it all: amazing canines, a…

Come, Sit, Stay: A Conversation about Coping in Hard Times. March 28, 2020 Click Here to view the discussion on YouTube Interview with Colleen Pelar, CPDT-KA, CDBC. February 20, 2018 Episode of the show “Helping Families Love Living With Dogs” Patricia and Colleen discuss “Fear and Trauma-How Dogs Experience It and How Owners can help their…

The seminar in Seattle was great fun, lots of good folks  and excellent questions from the audience. In the morning I talked about treatment for dog-dog reactivity, and I promised a summary of that on the blog. Here it is, with the obligatory caution that the morning itself wasn’t close to enough time to cover…

I’ve had a lot of questions lately about resource guarding. I’m not sure why–dogs stuck together inside because of the weather? A butterfly flapping its wings in China? Who knows. But I thought it was a good time to revisit a post I wrote in 2014 about dogs who guard resources from other dogs. Here…

Can we learn anything about a dog’s behavior around unfamiliar dogs with the use of a fake, stuffed dog? That is the question asked by a team of researchers in Massachusetts, who did a study comparing the responses of 45 shelter dogs to a live dog and a fake, plush, stuffed dog. The real dogs…

Not long ago I re-posted a blog about Resource Guarding (RG), but focused treatment options on dogs who direct their threats toward people. Many of you asked about RG between dogs, and I promised I’d address that this summer. Here we go… There’s no doubt that RG between dogs is a bit trickier than when…

Let Dogs Be Dogs: Understanding Canine Nature and Mastering the Art of Living with Your Dog by The Monks of New Skete and Marc Goldberg. The primary premise of the books is that dogs can’t be happy without a pack leader, and that had better be you. It thus seems appropriate to begin this review…

  My first experience in a dog training class was in 1968 in Southern California. We were to teach our dogs to sit, stay, heel and come from ten feet away. From a Sit/Stay. That was it. A lot of energy was put into perfect heels (using leash jerks of course) and long Sit/Stays for…

Well, how fun was that? Last weekend I was at the “Im-PECK-able Training Seminar” put on by Craig Schultz and Sally Dickinson for the K9 Behavior Consortium in Manassas, VA. I went primarily to learn more about sniffer dogs for my next mystery novel (wheeeee!), but reveled in spending time with some great dogs, and…

Today’s question was inspired by the comments of sheepdog trainer Patrick Shannahan, who argued at a recent sheep dog clinic that I needed to ask Maggie to “take responsibility” for her behavior. Eeeps! Isn’t that perspective one that trainers and behaviorists (me included) have been arguing against for decades? In most contexts, it is the…

Thanks for all the great comments about your experiences with dogs who are reactive, whether it’s to other dogs, or to people, or other objects. If you haven’t read the comments, here’s what comes out (at least to me) loud and clear: 1. There isn’t any one method that works for all dogs. Dogs are…

I’m repeating a post from 2024, because I am 1) truly interested in whether things have improved, even a bit, related to the male/female ratio of dog trainers and dog training seminar in current times, and 2) I’m updating The Puppy Primer and spending pretty much all my waking hours on it. Just asked my…

As some of you know, on January 9 I did a webinar for ASPCApro on adopting a dog into a multi-dog home. It was geared toward shelter and rescue professionals and volunteers, covering everything from how to do the first introduction to managing the household as time goes on, and what to do if it’s…

I was going to title this Size Matters? But then, well . . . you know. But today’s question IS about size, and whether a dog’s size influences your interest or attraction to it. Full disclosure: I grew up in a dog-loving family that gravitated toward medium to large-size dogs. Comments were made by my…

So I don’t bury the lead, here’s where I’m going today: Why does the concept that dogs can get angry make some people angry? I was reminded of that when I was looking something up in For the Love of a Dog (I often forget where I wrote what . . .) and ran into…

I’ve been to a lot of dog-related seminars, and, at every one, the female/male ratio is something like 90/10. Or 95/5. I thought it would be different at the Im-PECK-able seminar put on by K9 Behavior Consortium, thinking of all the guys I’ve run into over the years with law enforcement dogs, especially drug and…

We all know that family dog trainers don’t train dogs, they train people. As I tease my veterinarian friends, our job is harder, because we have to train our clients to do the equivalent of the surgery themselves. And we all know that we, as a species, can be a bit challenging to train. Not…

  Continuing my ability to relate just about everything in the world to dog training, I offer you some thoughts about how good editing is like good dog training.  For example, here is a typical editing progression, starting with:              “I really think that dog is too hot to keep working.” Eeeps, delete the “really”:…

Maggie loves dog poop. Eating it, that is. She is an obsessive coprophagic, especially in winter, when any poop not found and picked up becomes a poopsickle. It’s considered a normal behavior in dogs, and a disgusting behavior to us primates, whose only use the feces of others to throw it when angry, or fertilize…

Karen London and I are revising Feisty Fido: Help for the Leash Aggressive Dog, and I find myself fascinated by how perspectives and techniques change over time. We’re not changing the essence of the booklet, far from it, but there are a few things that are being modified because of our experiences and gains in…

What are we to call ourselves, those of us who love our dogs like family but respect their, well, dogness? Dog owners? Pet parents? Guardians? All of these titles have pro’s and cons. Are we dog owners? Well, yes, in that Skip and Maggie are MY dogs, and Ginger or Butch are yours. We take…

I’ll start with the bottom line. I don’t use the word “dominance” when talking to people about training their dogs. There’s just no profit in it. Even given that dominance is about “priority access” and “social freedom,” but not about how to get it, I still see nothing but the potential for confusion and misuse.…

Here’s the post I thought I’d lost! (Will my viral-hazed brain ever come back to normal?) Hey, I am back among the living. Not much energy, pretty slow in the head, but actually eating real food again (well, still can’t eat chocolate, which along with fresh spinach and warm bread is the only real food…

A top handler said, after Maggie and I had had a rough run at a sheepdog trial last month, “You’re in good company, this is hardest thing I’ve ever done”. Bless them for their compassion. I’ve probably heard that ten times this summer, from people who in their other lives are accomplished professionals who work…