010 | Liz & Titan

Ruff Around The Edges

In this episode I talk to Liz about her amazing blue heeler Titan.

Titan was Liz’s obedience champion prospect and Liz had visions of him and her Shetland Sheepdog Tucker getting along and being best friends.

Alas, the universe had different plans for all of them.

Liz is able to articulate something that is dear to my heart as well. Teaching “obedience drills” or tricks is very different from behavior modification.

We also talk about her moving away from positive reinforcement training in an attempt to get that perfect dog that according to experts is hiding somewhere inside Titan out of him, and how she moved back to it after having gone down a “learn everything there is about dog aggression rabbit hole” and heaving read Marissa Martino’s book “Human-Canine Behavior Connection; Building Better Relationships Through Dog Training”.

I wholeheartedly support Marissa’s training philosophies. You can find the link to her website Paws and Reward here: https://pawsandreward.com/

The link to the Paws and Reward podcast episode featuring Liz and Titan on the value of neutral is here:

https://pawsandreward.com/episode35/

Coming back to this podcast episode though, Liz also beautifully describes how the larger herding community helped her see how great Titan is.

As she wrote to me later, herding people seem to understand inherently that you can’t breed for certain characteristics without getting some other stuff to come along for the ride and that’s just the way it is and the dog is still awesome.

I could not have said it better myself.

We also discuss the beauty of simple management strategies like baby gates.