How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD

Everything seems crazy and awful right now in the world and then, on top of it all, people are… putting costumes on dogs.

Anamarie and I delve into the weirdness and ethics of dressing up dogs. Additionally, we talk about Brian Hare and Vanessa Wood’s Atlantic article about a third wive of domestication in dogs, and the Monks of New Skete’s feature in the Associated Press. Ultimately, my 5-year-old sums up the spirit of the episod...

Anamarie and I recorded this episode separately because we had different things we wanted to communicate in a format that wasn't really right for conversation.

Me first: What if you're someone who has strong feelings about putting dogs in shock collars and... one of your friends publishes a paper on research she did that involved putting shock collars on dogs?

What if that person is your podcast host?

Hi, I'm Annie, and this is my lif...

Meet Anamarie Johnson! She was one of my first hires at School For The Dogs nearly a decade ago. She recently got her PhD, and she'd coming on to join me as a co-host!

Me= Annie Grossman, dog trainer, business owner, human. I started this podcast in 2018. I had to take a little time off, mostly because... I was working on a book! It comes out next week! Learn more at SchoolForTheDogs.com/book.

It's called...

Annie reads a post from Denise Fenzi's page that sparked some interesting comments on labels in the world of dog training. Some dog trainers are considerate about the use of some punishment in training and others work to avoid it at all costs. And then there are trainers who simply don't know what they're doing at all. Like... Dog Daddy. He calls himself "balanced" but no educated pro trainer would give him th...

Today I caught up with Zak George to hear the latest about his public feud with Dog Daddy.

See Dog Daddy's petition against Zak George at Change.org

https://www.change.org/p/stop-zak-george?source_location=search

Dog Daddy, Part 1: The face of modern "bad" dog training

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/IZ8rDgtkWEb

Dog Daddy, Part 2: Zak George calls out animal abuse masquerading...

Annie went to see Dog Daddy live in New Jersey this weekend and reports back about the odd experience of being in a room where what looked to her like animal abuse seemed didn't seem to bother anyone else.

The episode then includes a rebroadcast of a 2020 interview Annie did with School For The Dogs trainer Erin Whelan. Erin was a professional French Horn Player. Then she adopted a beagle mix named Oliver and enrolled him ...

Zak George, one of the most influential dog trainers of the 21st century, has been using his large virtual platform to bring attention to the problematic methods being used by the Internet-famous dog trainer known as Dog Daddy.

Zak and Annie discuss the origins of this work, his efforts to get his followers to picket Dog Daddy's events, and more.

Annie also talks about why the conversation about whether or not it is a...

Annie reads from How We Got By, a new book by Shaina Feinberg & Julia Rothman which includes a chapter about how School For The Dogs got started. She also gives an update on the bizarre/sad Dog Daddy world tour, and shares how excited she got when she first read about a man being called "the hot dog trainer." Who was the handsome fella?

November giveaway: Enter to win a "Hot Dog Trainer" mug this month a...

Annie talks about why she is generally against costumes for dogs and suggests some alternatives to dressing up your dog on Halloween. She also discusses some feedback she got about last week’s episode, which featured an interview with the lawyer representing the woman who was mauled by Cesar Millan’s dog. Lastly, she shares two anecdotes: one about how she is using a Buy Nothing group on Facebook to get neighbors to help her train ...

A trainer who goes by the name "Dog Daddy" has millions followers and has recently incited arguments on social media: His critics accuse him of harming dogs and calling it training; his fans accuse his detractors of being sissies who can’t face reality. These two vociferous groups are facing off online and at his in-person events around the world.

Annie puts the saga into the context of a larger (and longer) story ab...

Sometimes you stumble on something amazing and free.

Maybe that's how you feel about this podcast?

That's how Annie felt this week when her dream office chair appeared outside her door...

You can buy good dog training (or great chairs). That's what School For The Dogs sells. But you can also get a lot of valuable dog training advice for nothing, if you're lucky. You, dear listener, just got lucky.

...

Annie has been on podcast-hiatus working on her book, but... she's back! Join her for a conversation with longtime friend of the podcast, British pet marketing guru Dom Hodgson, who is coming to New York City to lead a seminar at School For The Dogs later this month. Dom shares his thoughts on the current state of the pet service industry and gives some really excellent advice on how to turn happy customers into brand cheerlead...

Annie was recently browsing her local dog Facebook group, when she came across a post by a woman named Michaelle who was reaching out for training help with her reactive foster dog. Several of the replies recommended a trainer in the area who was not professionally certified, and Michaelle posted that she had decided to work with. When Annie, perhaps a little too aggressively, responded with critical questions about this trainer, M...

Texas-based trainer Beth Berkobien has a master's degree in animal behavior, specializes in dog aggression, and offers virtual training sessions internationally. She was raised on a farm with field-trial Labradors and grew up around punishment-based dog training using aversives. After being encouraged by a trainer to use an e-collar on her dog that caused him to completely shut down, she moved away from aversives. Many years later,...

Anamarie Johnson, a former School For The Dogs trainer and current PhD candidate in Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology at Arizona State University, returns to the podcast to discuss her research on language used by dog trainers on their websites. In addition to discussing some of her findings (like what it means when a trainer talks about "nature" and some of the stranger New Age-y language used  by aversive and R+ ...

Hang out with any Positive Reinforcement dog trainer and they're bound to have a shirt in their wardrobe from the online store Woof Cultr: An apparel company that has a very niche market: Force-free trainers. Woof Cultr is the brainchild of Mandy Boutelle, who originally left a career as a hairstylist to become a certified dog walker in San Francisco. When she started doing off-leash group dog walks, she knew she had to learn more ...

Sara Caron had a leash-reactive dog, and as she started to research a quick fix for the problem, she threw out a wide net and tried lots of things. With guidance from this podcast, she began to see a way of dog training that made sense to her. When felt she had reached a plateau in her own solo study of animal behavior, she enrolled in the School For The Dogs Professional Course last year. She got another puppy shortly before start...

Leeyah Wiseman is a recent graduate of School For The Dogs Professional Course. If you follow us on TikTok or Instagram, you probably know her from the videos she does for SFTD. While she never thought of herself as a "dog person," she ended up adopting a puppy, George, and falling in love with him. But then she realized she had an issue on her hands: Separation anxiety. Her work figuring out how to deal with this issue in a way th...