April 27th, 2012
By Eric Letendre
My wife, Rachael, came home last night, walked in the house and asked: “What’s wrong?”
I was amazed. How did she know I was mad?
I asked her how she knew something was wrong?
She said, “I could just tell.”
You see, I had been working out in the yard all day clearing brush, raking and cleaning up.
Just before she came home, I was driving the tractor and not paying attention, had driven right into a low hanging branch, bashing my
head into it.
I was more mad at myself than that it hurt.
Rach asking what was wrong before I had even said anything to her was a very good dog training lesson.
What your body language says is often more important than what your voice is saying.
Let me splain:
Your dog pays VERY close attention to your body language.
The position of your body will communicate different information to your dog.
Dogs have three primary drives that help them survive. The three drives are:
1. Prey
2. Pack
3. Defense
When you get down on the ground or lean back you can trigger your dog’s prey drive. Standing up straight and walking with your dog activates your dog’s pack drive.
Leaning over your dog will trigger your dog’s defense drive.
Understanding drives helps you understand dog behavior.
When you train a dog to walk next to you, your dog should be in pack drive.
A dog trained in protection work needs to be in defense drive.
A dog that is learning to come when called needs to be in prey drive.
If you lean forward and call your dog to you, it could confuse your dog because your body language is communicating the wrong message.
By leaning back or squatting down, you make it much easier for your dog to come to you because your body language is communicating the correct message.
Most dog trainers never teach this and it is the reason I included a whole section about body language and drives in The Ultimate Online Recall Course.
It can make a HUGE difference when you are teaching your dog to come when called.
I beleive that the fastest way to train the recall command is to understand this little-known concept.
It’s easy and fun.
You can learn more about drives here:
All the best,
Eric
Eric Letendre is a professional dog trainer from the United States and has been training dogs for over 20 years, teaching regular, average, every-day owners all over the world how to get the training results they want as fast as possible. Eric is also the author of numerous reports, the E-Book “101 Ways to Improve Your Dog’s Behavior,” “The Amazing Dog Training Man Book,” and produced and stars in his DVD “Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer.”
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Eric Letendre is a professional dog trainer from the United States. For more than 20 years, he has been developing dog training techniques that have worked for dog owners all over the world. Eric operates from a home office or a laptop while traveling and draws on his experience and passion for dog training to show others how to develop a dog that is truly “Man’s Best Friend”.
Eric is the author of numerous reports, the E-Book “101 Ways to Hack Your Dog’s Behavior,” “The Amazing Dog Training Man Book,” and produced and stars in his DVD “Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer.”
