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The Clicker Challenge: A Great New Dog Sport!

Boston clicker trainer MaryAnn Callahan and I just returned from the National UK Clicker Challenge, in England. Kay Laurence, founder of Learning About Dogs, Ltd., and Teaching Dogs magazine, originated the idea and began holding local Clicker Challenges in England a couple of years ago.

Clicking Miracles: An Unmanageable Dog

From Sue Ailsby: There's a certain kind of dog-owning household that produces, entirely out of kindness and good intentions, an almost unmanageable dog. This dog doesn't just jump up on people, but careens into them, grabs and tears at their clothes, knocks over furniture and small children, steals, digs, barks, and carries on incessantly. The family have almost always had the dog since puppyhood: sometimes it is two or three years old before they begin looking for help.

About Melissa C. Alexander

During a Web search in 1998, she stumbled across clicker training and hasn't looked back since. Much of her early education came from the Internet, but as she began attending camps led by Bob and Marian Bailey, Sue Ailsby, and other positive trainers, she grew dissatisfied with mailing lists that frequently resorted to punishment to "fix" problem situations.

In Class: Pass the Peaceful Puppy

From Nina Bonderenko: We have a "Pass the Peaceful Puppy" session in the first puppy class, so that all puppies can learn the correct way to behave when handled. One reason why some dogs become really pushy and even growly when handled is that, when they are puppies, people put them down if they struggle when held. This is an automatic response by people to a wriggling, struggling puppy which wants to get back to its littermates or to play. However, it simply shows the puppy that 'Resistance is fertile'(!), or in other words, it is productive to resist something you don't want or like. You are teaching the puppy to complain and argue with you. The puppy gets what it wants.

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