Most Popular Q&As

Thank you Ed and Cindy for all the information on the Leerburg website. I just purchased 3 DVDs - puppy, basic obedience, and pack structure and am anxiously awaiting their arrival. I have a 4 month GSD hard puppy. He has strong prey drive and is learning quickly with markers and food (at home, no to low distractions). At weekly obedience school (outdoor, at least 50 other dogs around, super high distraction), he is very unruly. I've used a standard choke chain, a snug prong...

Mr. Frawley, I am a five year K-9 handler and just started working my second police k-9. I received my first K-9 when he was three years old and he never had an outing problem. I received my second K-9 when he was 18 months old. He is now two and I am having an outing problem with him. Sometimes he will out clean and quickly, and sometimes he will not. I have tried to stay on top of this problem and not let him get away with it. During training when I see that he is being difficult...

First let me say thank you for putting together such an amazing web site. I also purchased your video on dog aggression and have learned a tremendous amount. I have two Dobermans, male and female littermates, now 8 months old. They have had few nasty fights, but through tips from your video and training and working with them separately, we have made amazing progress. I am still stuck on one issue... Ruger, the male, is the sweetest boy. However, he awakens from a dead sleep snarlin...

I have a pretty well-trained Belgian Malinois. He does explosive detection and tracking very well. He is also very obedient. He has no aggression toward dogs, territory, toys, people, etc. But for some reason when my dog has any sort of pain whatsoever, he becomes highly aggressive only toward me. I have been reading and have been familiarized with a lot of your training methods at Leerburg since I left K-9 handler school. But even in your literature or the schools, I can’t find anything th...

I have a 15 pound terrier mix (probably Cairn/Lassa) who is really hard to train, especially to come when called. I've tried treats, toys (he likes tugs), long lines, etc. Even the Chihuahua is more consistent at coming when called. What kind of toy would hold his interest longer than a rope tug? It lasts about 3 minutes.

We have just purchased an Educator 400TS remote trainer from you. We have a 10 month old Belgian Malinois. We are using the 3/4" points. Are those the best size or do we need to get the extra long ones? We have just begun to test the collar on the dog. Thanks for your input.

I have a 13 week puppy, mom was a golden doodle, dad was husky. He sleeps in a crate all night and has been better about being able to hold it from 10pm-7am, sometimes will bark between 2-4 to poop. I put him in his crate a couple of times a day just so he knows it's not a bad place to be. From the beginning we taught him to ring the bell to go out. Sometimes, like tonight he will ring the bell, I take him out, he goes poop. Sometimes he will poop or pee right in front of me, I yell "No! not ...

Hi Cindy, I purchased an Educator ET-500 collar based on your Youtube video, on Black Friday. Shortly after making the purchase, I saw on Educator's website, that the ET-500 is for small to medium dogs. This wasn't mentioned on the video, and on the training gear page it only says 15 lbs and up. I thought maybe this was a question for a trainer who may use the product. My male 9 month old GSD is a lean 80 lbs or so, and my question is whether or not this collar is appropriate for him. I lo...

Hello Ed and Cindy, In your experience, how effective is pepper spray in breaking up a dog fight? Occasionally (say once a year) my 2 rescue boxers will fight with each other. My alpha female goes after my (much larger and younger) male. The male then has to defend himself as the female will repeatedly go after him, and he has hurt the female before. We eventually are able to break them up, but I know how foolish it is to try to break up a dog fight, especially if you are by yourself. ...

I ran across your article online about your thoughts on marker training. I was taught to train by only correcting bad behaviors in the early 90s. Yankin and crankin. It has worked well for me in obedience training my dogs over the years. Your article however has caused me to rethink my approach. I have 2 german shephard puppy?litter mates male and female. I got them at 4 months. They are now 6 months.?I walk them and train them every day. As a side note, I train and walk them separately. They...

Hello, I'm hoping you can give me some advice about my 18 month old male nurtured border collie Sherlock. Every evening we go up the park and play with a group of dogs they all get on well. In the past two weeks, we have had some new puppies up the park and Sherlock has gone for them and pinned them down and growled and bit their cheek. He was making a lot of noise but didn't seem to hurt the poor puppy or draw blood. I 'm worried that he will scare the poor puppies. He'd be playing fine ...

I have 6 dogs as we speak. 4 pugs, PPD Doberman, and a 14 year old GSD(extremely submissive to all dogs especially my pugs). All of them get long great. I am avid about kenneling them, ex-pens, there is structure in my home, and outside my home with these dogs. We have no issues with dog fights, etc. Everyone knows there place in the pack, knows I AM THE PACK LEADER, and things go pretty well. This being said, I have worked and trained with Heath Farthing of VFK9 for years. I have purchased a...

I have a four year old Mastiff and a one year old Great Dane. I got both as puppies. The problem that I have now is that the Great Dane will attack my Mastiff if he comes to close to his food, toy, treat. The Great Dane even attacked the Mastiff when he tried to come over to me. There was no advance warning like growling. I always let the Great Dane know that his behavior was bad, and also let the Mastiff know that he was ok and doing nothing wrong. Most times when these attacks happen, withi...

Please help... Me and my fiancee have a 2 year old male American Staffordshire Terrier (70 lbs.) and a 6 month old female Pit Bull (45 lbs.). She started her first heat cycle about 16 days ago. We want them to mate, but because she is not fully grown, we wanted to wait. We had bought something that's similar to a diaper so that he could not mate with her. Just this morning, he had gotten around the diaper and mated with our female Pit Bull. Now my question is, am I looking at some serio...

Ed: First thank you for your great web site and training tapes. I have purchased your basic obedience tape and will be purchasing other tapes in the near future. The advice on the tape has helped greatly with the training of my Kangal. (I own several other breeds - 3 kuvasz, 1 landseer newf (old) (water rescue trained) and one very young sweet golden retriever, who will be using your training method on agility etc. of course on a very light level 1 correction - unlike my Kangal (al...

If I'm switching my puppy from kibble to Honest Kitchen should I do it gradually or it won't make a difference. I plan to feed him honest kitchen with raw meat. When I do feed the honest kitchen with meat should I only feed meat that has no bones at first or start with chicken wings with little bones until they get used to eating raw? Thanks in advance.

Hi Cindy: Thanks so much for all your wonderful work. I have taken to heart your advice about over vaccination after losing my beloved dog 2 years ago. I had to put her in a kennel (big mistake) for almost two weeks as we were leaving the country and had no one to watch her. At the time I was ignorant of all this and followed their rules about kennel cough, bordatella, parvo, etc. They required that all these be given before they would board her. Within a week after we brought her ...

Hi Ed, Since you have had many dogs, I am in a way hoping you have seen this before. My GSD started to lose some of his fur around the edges of the ears, following with the skin thickening and cracking and becoming quite painful. I took him to the vets and he had his ears flushed, had a skin scrape done all coming back negative for bacteria, yeast or mange. She suggested he might have a food allergy so we started the elimination diet and he is on fish and potatoes. He's been on thi...

Ed, Is it advisable to train an aggressive alert on narcs and a passive alert on gun power? How do I handle the idea of searching school lockers knowing there may be gun power etc. When I train on narcs I give a narc command and do not accept any other hit. How should I introduce guns and gun powder, etc.? Thanks, Mark

We adopted a 4 yr old GSD female about 1 1/2 yr ago. (She is def. an Alpha female). We immediately enrolled her in a beginners and then intermediate obedience class. My son (28) started taking her to a local Schutzhund club weekly. She does well, but the comment was always "she's a rescue"- as an excuse for the possibility she would not do well. Now they exclaim "And she's a rescue" because she does well. (I purchased a GSD puppy for my son). The problem is with me... She is the lo...