Everybody, welcome to shape by dog.

I am Susan Garrett.

And if you are listening to this podcast or if you're on YouTube watching this podcast,

chances are you at least have a curiosity, an interest in how to train your

dog effectively without the use of physical punishment and blame. You're at least curious.

And for many of you, it's a goal that you strive to reach every single day. How can I effectively communicate with

my dog? How can I achieve lofty goals with my dog? Or how can I have the best family pet ever

without using physical corrections or intimidation or verbal corrections. How do I get that?

If that's you, then chances are you've already met up with what we call the gap.

And the gap is, let's say over here is the destination where we're heading. This is what we like to

refer to as do land. And this is where we recognize that dogs are doing the best they can

with the education we've given them in the environment that we're asking them to work in.

That's our guiding thought,

that we want to train our dog using reinforcement, using games, using their own drives, and figuring out what they love best. In Dooland, babies never cry and birds always sing and there's rainbows and

unicorns and it's not a fictitional place, really. But sometimes it seems like that. Because if you've

come from a world where, like I, I was trained and what today would refer to as balance training,

where I was taught to get the dog to do what you

want. I mean, this was back in the late 80s. You teach the dog with cookies on the nose to

lure them to get behaviors you want and then you reach this magical moment where you've

arbitrarily decided he knows better. And therefore, when he doesn't do what you've asked him to do,

you need to follow it up with a physical correction. This is the land of blame and judgment.

This is the land where dogs hear things like, ah, ah, or no, or hey! This is the land where there's tools that we use to punish behavior because the

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