Snowbound Kennels

09/03/2026

Unpopular opinion.

Pet dog clients don't need a focused/attention heel.

How about off leash recall around distractions first?

09/03/2026

An absolute imperative for me training flushing and pointing dogs is strong flying birds.

Hundreds of dollars of Birds not even worth using and replacements should arrive on Saturday.

I frequently think when a breeder proclaims "they fly like wild birds" they have in fact never seen a wild bird fly.

This ain't it!

09/02/2026

"Certified dog trainer"

Kind of interesting in the pet dog world that title, regardless of it's worth or lack thereof, seems to be a real selling point.

In the Gun Dog Training sphere, retrievers, pointing dogs, flushing dogs and retrievers, I've never even heard of a certified Gun dog trainer.

Oh I'm sure in 2026 it exist but it's not a thing.

Trainers prosper or not based on the success they have with the dogs they train.

Period.



09/02/2026

"My dog doesn't play with other dogs, how do I get my dog to play with other dogs?"

I hear that a lot.

If your dog has had ample opportunity to safely interact with other dogs and your dog has chosen to not interact with other dogs your dog does not want to interact with other dogs so you wanted to play with other dogs, you're doing it for you not your dog!

Because, if your dog wanted to play with other dogs it would.

I don't get together with the boys to watch a game on TV. I don't get together with the boys to go have a beer. I don't get together with the boys for poker night. If I wanted to I would, I do not want to.

A lot of dogs don't interact or interact successfully with other dogs because they lack the experience and many can be quite socially awkward appearing either extremely apprehensive or extremely aggressive.

I've seen several dogs labeled by "K9 behaviorist" as fearful or aggressive and the owners told they could not be around other dogs. The dogs were totally fine, they were just socially awkward and needed the right exposure. Amazing that a one day assessment of a dog might not be accurate!

With proper and thoughtful exposure some dogs will in fact learn to play with other dogs, I see it here all the time.

But let's talk about the Dog version of me, Maxx.

I took Maxx on to train for a national Rescue group donating Training to make him more adoptable. It was clear he wasn't gonna be adopted because of his history and I adopted him.

Now I don't know what the first two years of his life were like but I've had him for four or five years, he's been around countless dogs of different breeds, altered and intact, males and females and has had endless opportunity to interact and play with other dogs.

In the entire time I've owned him I think I've seen him actively play with another dog maybe 7–8 times.

He's just on his own program happy to do his own thing and he doesn't want to play. If he wanted to he would because he's had ample thoughtful exposure.

If your dog doesn't have a history of bad experiences with other dogs or a history of giving other dogs bad experiences, it's been exposed to a variety of other dogs in a thoughtful situation for extended periods of time and it doesn't want to play, your dog does not want to play.

Let your dog do what it wants to do, don't try to coerce your dog into doing what you want it to do.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

And that's Ronin the GSD in the video. I guarantee any K9 behaviorist would've labeled him aggressive in even a two week evaluation. He wasn't aggressive he was socially awkward. He just didn't know how to play with the other kids on the playground until he got some thoughtful exposure.

09/01/2026

Positive, negative, escape, avoidance, the four quadrants.

Honestly my training is so flexible and fluid I don't live and die by "scientific" definitions.

In fact more than once when I've seen a K9 behavioral researchers conclusion my first thought is that they need to actually get out and learn about dog training.

I think having a common language in behavior behavior based research is helpful because then we hopefully are on more or less the same page.

Certain disciplines totally disregard anything "science based"but yet what they do in Training has fairly clear scientific definitions and explanations.

On the other hand it seems like some people are so caught up in defining what they are doing and sticking to some predetermined approach they aren't flexible enough in their approach to optimize their training and in some cases are entirely unsuccessful because they are locked into a certain dogma.

And the researchers who are giving us these scientific definitions of how we are training, who are they, how are they arriving at this, how reliable and accurate are these definitions and as I understand science, science should always be willing to change based on new information. With that in mind what's carved in Stone today might not be in the future.

I think blindly following some scientific validation of how you are training and willfully ignoring the current science that clearly explains what you were doing are equally questionable.

I'm not sure I ever put this information up here but during Covid I was in touch via email with a PhD holding head of behavioral studies at a major university in the United States.

To make a long story short they were going to purchase electric collars and prong collars and use them on dogs to validate whether they were productive or harmful tools.

When I pointed out that was like giving a rifle to a novice shooter and when he missed the target blaming the miss on the rifle. I told them if they had bad results with those tools it's because they were using them poorly.

At that point in our email exchange I had clearly caused a lot of cognitive dissonance with the professor and they actually ghosted me despite my offer to drive across the country and at no charge spend as much time with them as necessary so they knew how to properly use those tools and hopefully conduct more accurate research.

The professor had spun so badly by that point they claimed they would never do that because "I would be biased'"

Exactly how me being biased would inappropriately impact their research if they we're actually conducting more thoughtful research I never found out because of the ghosting.

I actually have our entire email exchange and at some point, with the names removed to protect the guilty, it will be all posted on the snowbound kennels website.

08/31/2026

"Aggressive dogs/dogs that fight"

It's a huge subject that's gonna take more than one post but my boarding train kennel operates differently than most in that I have a fence and exercise yard and I have dogs out there in appropriate groups multiple times a day.

It's pretty common for dogs to come in that have been labeled as aggressive, fighters, dogs banned from boarding kennels, daycare and dog parks.

Very very frequently it's because of what happens the first time the dog is exposed to those environments.

Many of those dogs labeled aggressive or fighters actually really aren't they are just incredibly socially awkward and don't know how to behave and interact with a group of other dogs.

I see it all the time. Dogs come in with that label, they are introduced to the exercise yard with appropriate dogs, they learn how to interact appropriately and then eventually they are out with the general population which frequently includes both large and small breeds, males, females, intact and altered.

I actually have a dog here now that when he arrived would savage and try to dominate literally any dog he came across.

Now, with a thoughtful introduction, he is out in the general population ignoring dogs that are checking him out, not bothering other dogs in general and has now actually started playing with some of the other dogs.

He wasn't aggressive, he was just socially awkward and needed experience.

08/31/2026

08/30/2026

New troublemaker at Snowbound Kennels but not mine!

08/29/2026

Invisible fences, barrier fences, perimeter electric collars, use prior to transitioning a dog to understand command reinforcement with an electric collar can make it super difficult for some dogs.

People tell me their dog is "trained" to the barrier fence. I guess if you consider Training when the dog has no understanding of why what is taking place is taking place Training then your dog may be trained.

It's simple. Your dog goes someplace on your property, it encounters a sensation that it doesn't understand, find startling and it doesn't want to go back to that place because it associates the sensation with its location.

And now does that in potentially a few locations on your property and voilà, your dog is "trained"to your barrier fence.

But the dog literally has no idea what's going on. It went someplace, encountered something startling and it doesn't want to go back to that place. Your dog does not think "oh, there's a barrier fence here I better not go back!"

It literally stays away from that place because it doesn't have any idea what the hell happened.

Now imagine you're trying to transition that dog to reinforcement with the electric collar. With some dogs at even the lowest available level they feel that sensation and effectively say "what do you mean sit, heel or come to you? I can't be here because of this sensation I don't understand or I can't go there because going there might again elicited this sensation I don't understand!"

And the best part is the barrier fence or barrier location people will tell you it's better to train a dog to their product first and then transitioning it to the Training collar.

I wonder how many dogs they've transitioned to the Training collar?

I first started dealing with this almost 30 years ago when the original underground fences first came out so I have an incredibly long history of helping dogs work through the issues surrounding their confusion.

Just today I had a dog that trained beautifully here run into some problems at home where it had previously been on a barrier fence and would actually back up if the training collar was activated.

Don't think, like many people, of it only happened once, encountering the perimeter collar, the dog can't be confused going forward.

It's called single event learning occurrence. 

Having transition countless dogs from barrier fences to the collar and the collar to barrier fences I can absolutely say it's much easier on the dog to go from the collar to the fence than the fence to the collar but with the right approach dogs that have been on a fence can successfully transitioned to the Training collar.

08/29/2026

This is basically what people think happens when you activate an electric dog training collar.