Hey everyone, welcome to the Houndations podcast. I'm your host Tony Peterson. Today's episode is all about thinking about dog training in a different way, and then setting some goals to make sure you kind of see the whole thing through.

The new year's upon us, and while that might mean a lot of things to a lot of people,

it should also mean something to our dogs.

Even though the smartest dog out there has no idea what day it is or what year it is,

and really couldn't care about the New Year's, but we do.

We like a reason to celebrate, and I guess this is it.

But we also like to set some New Year's goals and mostly not stick to them.

That's no good. But it shouldn't stop us at looking at what we want out of our dogs this year and how to get there. But this topic

also goes way beyond ringing just every last drop of ability out of our four-legged buddies.

There is a tendency, at least in the working dog world, and definitely the sporting dog world, to look at training as very linear.

Whether that means training a canine to sniff out a kilo of narcotics buried inside the wheel well of a semi,

or training a dog to swim out and grab a dead duck by the body and

deliver it to hand. We break down those behaviors into workable sections and start at the beginning.

Over time, those behaviors are daisy-chained together so that the dog understands the ask and works

through it. Eventually, the task should be so well understood that even in dynamic environments,

with distractions galore, a good dog will see it through right until the very end. It's those

tethered-together behaviors that culminate in some repeatable skill that often leave normal dog

owners in the dust. Everyone understands how to get an eight-week-old puppy to sit or maybe lie down,

but when it comes to hand signals or blind retrieves or something a little more upper level,

things get tricky.

We inherently know this about our dogs,

but what doesn't get as much love is that training is so much more than just teaching a dog

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