Quote from a Book to get me started writing

“LURE DON’T MANIPULATE!”   This is straight from the book: “51 Puppy Tricks” by Kyra Sundance and Jadie.  For the record with baby puppies I agree.  With a young pup they need to be taught the correct things.  We need to help them understand what body position we want from them!  So we “lure” them into the proper behavior!  Most dogs like a treat and are willing to do anything we ask when use food (THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO THIS).  There are a million sites out there that teach you how to lure the dog into offering you behavior!  A long with this luring is the coaching!  SIT, SIT SIT OH GOOD DOG ARENT YOU SMART BLAH BLAH BLAH!  In my humble opinion, most folks jabber way to much to dogs.  Babies and puppies turn us into blathering idiots! When they are young I would imagine most of it sounds like a foreign language and sometimes the way a word is pronounced… it simply makes us smile or a dog just happens to give us that behavior!  The problem is a smile or a pup offering a behavior doesn’t mean we have communicated with them about what we ask them to do in the first place!

Which brings me to my question and I hope some one can TRULY ANSWER THIS FOR ME.  I AM OPEN TO HEAR THE ANSWER!  However, I expect the answer to be backed up with proven results!  What I want to know HOW TO QUIT USING FOOD AS A LURE AND MOVE THEM TO A REWARD BASED SYSTEM without any manipulation on the human’s part?  How far has that manner of teaching taken you?   How do you get CONSISTENT RELIABLE RESULTS through a reward only system?

 I would love to see an OPEN and HONEST discussion on training methods but it seems to me that the much of the dog world just is divided into 2 huge camps!  A POSITIVE TRAINING CAMP where any other methods are considered cold, cruel, harsh, and a whole bunch of other things.  The opposite of this is the FORCE TRAINING CAMP!  They seem to think that the only way you can get a dog to do anything reliably is through force.  Talking to the extremist of either side is like talking to the wall!  THEIR WAY IS RIGHT AND THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT! 

So where does that leave those of us that are somewhere in between???  I have to be honest here.  There are many times even with a successful as I have been in the dog world where I feel like I just plain don’t fit in and plain don’t get it!   I am a huge advocate of “RELATIONSHIP” with dogs!  Just as relationship with people there are highs and lows, there is love and discipline, and there needs to be BALANCE!  NOTHING IS THIS WORLD is all good and nothing is all bad.   Hooter taught me one thing that I will always and ever more do….I will love a dog enough that I will not give up on it!  I don’t want the dog to be the best in any one thing I simply want the dog to give me the best they have!  I am going to work to unlock every piece of potential that dog has no matter what that takes!  I am going to work to figure out how BEST that dog learns and teach it that way!  I only hope that I live long enough to learn all the many ways that there are to communicate and teach a dog!