I am often asked questions like,... how long will training take, when will my dog start behaving, is there a faster way to train my dog, when can I stop these training exercises...

Or I hear comments like,... he used to listen to me before, I tried that and it didn't work, I didn't think training my dog would be so much work...

I alway wonder why we don't ask those same kinds of questions of our children's teachers, coaches, and parents. Training a dog can be compared to raising a child in many respects. We have to be careful not to treat our dogs like surrogate children but they are intelligent social animals, just like us in many respects. They go through stages in their lives such as puppy hood where everything they do is cute; into adolescence were they rebel and pretend they didn't learn anything at all in the past six months; then hopefully become stable adults; then they start to hit their senior years and may start slowing down or having accidents they never had before; some dogs experience trauma during their lives that may change their personality somewhat, etc.

I wish we could get rid of the work dog "training" as it seem to imply a one-off kind of scenario like programming your computer. Training your dog needs to be thought of as "living with your dog" and must be an ongoing relationship. The most important thing that I can teach my clients is how to tranistion their formal dog training programs or sessions into a normal part of daily living that simply becomes the norm. In formal training we teach the dog to sit. In life the dog simply learns to sit before the door opens or to sit if they want to be pet.