Leerburg Obedience training?

[vinjashira]

I don't know what his training method is like, but his narrow-minded views about some countries are enough for me not to want to know any of his methods.

(read the page "Countries I Will NOT Do Business With" from his website)

[cyber-sibes]

I haven't read too much besides the training stuff, but his ego certainly comes through. He's definitly opinionated.

[Blackrose]

Hmmmmm....I have never heard of him before, so I started to read a bit on his website....didn't sound too bad, but I did come across some things that I personally wasn't comfortable with.

The reaction from the dog needs to be avoidance not aggression or more growling. If the dog growls when you correct him the correction needs to be harder.

I always thought answering aggression with aggression was a bad thing....

but if one gets really snarly or tries to fight [with another puppy] I say "PHOOIE!!!" and I grab the offending pup and shake it by the back of the neck until it screams. I let it go and pet it to calm it down to show it that I still love it and I do not hold a grudge.
I usually only have to do this a few times before the pups respond to "PHOOIE" Most quickly learn that I am the pack leader and I am the one that says who can and can not fight.

Then I put two muzzled adults together and take them for a walk. They both have leashes on. I do not allow them to square off and fight. If they do I get right in the middle of it and show them who is the pack leader. If these are big tough males with a lot of protection training and they turn on me I give it to them even harder.

This mouthiness goes away at 4 1/2 to 5 months of age.
How a person deals with this depends on your goals for the dog. If your child is very young (a baby), the pup needs to be corrected for chewing on the child. Grab it by the nape of the neck and shake it until it screams when it even goes near the baby.

He seems to be contradicting himself when he gave this bit of advice:

You forget that your dog is a baby. Would you grab a baby and shake it for crying at night - I think not. Put a radio near it and a rug to lay on. Read my article about house training. Crying in the crate goes away on its own if you ignore it - which is the only thing to do.

And yet any other time it is okay to scruff shake the poor puppy...

This concept must become very black and white to the dog. Aggression means getting my head taken off with a prong collar and not being aggressive means getting praised. The dog must understand that if a strange dog comes near, my pack leader will kick it’s butt and deal with the situation.

And yet, I was able to teach Blackie to behave around other dogs without having to take his head clean off with a prong collar. Simple tiny tugs to get his attention along with treat lures and teaching him heel did the job for me.
And besides that, I thought jerking with a prong collar was a BAD thing. I was told over and over again that a prong was NOT the tool of choose to help with Chloe "divebombing" other dogs on our walks.

You made a number of mistakes. 1- You should not have tried to keep an intact male Rot as a house dog. You found out why. The dog should have been neutered or kept in a dog kennel.

(This was after the Rottie bit his owner when she was holding onto his collar.)
Huh? I know someone who owns an intact Rottie as a house pet...no problems there.

When a dog jumps on you, the solution I use is to grab the front feet and pinch the toes until the dog screams. The pinch needs to be held for several seconds (the dog will usually chew on your hands a little.) I can stop a puppy from jumping on me in one training session.

Hm. Making the dog sit and ignoring it when it jumps on you works just as well, and the dog isn't terrified of you afterwards!

He has some good ideas, but the things coming out of his mouth listed above would be enough for me to not get his books and videos. According to him, how I'd get Chloe to stop counter surfing is plop a prong collar on her, clip a leash on her, and every time she puts her paws up tell her off and when she doesn't comply, jerk her clear off her feet hard enough to make her yelp. No thanks. She might not jump on the counters anymore, but I don't want her to be terrified of me either.

I'm all for using corrections in dog training when they are needed, but I don't believe in using extreamly harsh corrections to get a simple point across. I think the only time I've ever used a harsh correction was out of adrenaline when one of the dogs (might have been Blackie?) lunged at a car. Scared the crap out of me as it was out of the blue. He got pulled off of his feet and was extreamly submissive afterwards. Didn't fix the problem at all. Sit/Stays and rewards did.

And then there was this bit that bugged me as well....talking about the use of a "dominant dog collar":
"What handlers should not do with these collars is jerk on the collar like you would with a prong collar. That’s not how the dominant dogs collars are intended to be used. Jerking on a choke collar will cause muscle damage to the dogs neck.

Lifting the dog up the way I have explained does not cause any damage to the dog it simply takes their air away. This is not painful but it really gets the dogs attention."

Yep, and letting a dog hang itself after jumping off of the grooming table is an awesome way to teach the dog to not jump off of the table and to hold still for grooming. Hanging a dog really shows it who's boss. Reminds me of spinning the dog around on the end of the leash to correct it in ancient histroy dog training.

I heel the dog to this location and attach the line to the dominant dog collar. At that point I will do something that causes the dog to attack me. When he does I offer the arm with the hidden sleeve. When the dog is biting the arm the second handler will raise the dogs 4 feet off the ground. I remain totally calm and look the dog in the eye and tell him he will not bite me.

The dog stays there until he passes out. Then he is lowered to the ground and lies there until he regains consciousness. Then we start again. Usually these kind of dogs will only have to be hung 2 or 3 times and they quickly learn that you are a big person - the way they look at it is that you have the power to kill them at any time. This is a big big point in establishing dominance with dogs like this.

Granted that is for extreame cases with human aggressive dogs, but good grief!

[lizbud]

I read his views on dog training years ago. I thought he understood
that GSDs are very powerful animals and do need a no nonsense type
of approach in training. I usually had to take the advice with a little salt,
but he was helpful to me.

Don't know if he still does, but he used to breed & sell GSDs. They were
gorgeous dogs.

[mike001]

I've read most of his methods, he just doesn't fit my image of a great trainer, I find his methods much too rough for pups.

[crow_noir]

Just reading through what you cross posted Blackrose. What give me pause is how this guy seems intent on "holding" the punishment. Do people forget so easily that when a dog is "correcting" another dog it is a mere few tiny seconds or milliseconds. Why should we do any different. The only time a dog is "holding" a punishment is when it is an aggressive dog continuing the punishment. (With the exception of time outs. Even then dogs giving time outs to other dogs generally give them for shorter time period then humans to. Some of the time periods humans give would be the equivalent of telling a dog it's banished from the pack.)

[Blackrose]

Just reading through what you cross posted Blackrose. What give me pause is how this guy seems intent on "holding" the punishment. Do people forget so easily that when a dog is "correcting" another dog it is a mere few tiny seconds or milliseconds. Why should we do any different. The only time a dog is "holding" a punishment is when it is an aggressive dog continuing the punishment. (With the exception of time outs. Even then dogs giving time outs to other dogs generally give them for shorter time period then humans to. Some of the time periods humans give would be the equivalent of telling a dog it's banished from the pack.)

This was a thought that crossed my mind as well. I use "punishment", or correction, with Chloe. Trust me, I used all positive training with her, we'd get no where.

But from all that I have read and experienced, when you correct a dog, you should use the least amount of correction possible and as SOON as the dog shows the slightest sign of "okay, okay, I understand", you stop. For instance, your dog has a toy it isn't supposed to have. You don't scold the dog and keep yelling at it even when its ears are back and it is hunkered down.
If the dog is jumping on people, you don't pinch its webbing until it yelps if before the yelping it is trying in every possible way to be submissive. That just teaches the dog that its signals are being ignored.
I don't agree with punishing a dog for jumping to begin with....it thinks it is doing a good thing, but then you are punishing it without teaching it what you want first. I'm sure if every time Chloe jumped (she is a SPRING POLE!) on someone and they pinched her feet she'd stop jumping, but she'd be terrified of people...you touch the cookie sheet coming out of the oven and get burnt that doesn't stop you from baking cookies, but it does teach you to be afraid of the cookie sheet.

[Giselle]

I've read some of his articles and training advice, and it all sounds like physical domination. Unless you have an exceptionally hard dog, every punishment can create fear.
(hardness: "the dog's ability to recuperate from a disagreeable experience")

That said, I think Frawley is another Cesar Millan and I don't agree with either of them. They have some good ideas, but their good ideas are overshadowed by their ignorance towards real dog behavior. Alpha dogs don't grab the scruff of puppies until they scream for mercy. That's called violent abuse, not respectful leadership.

[cyber-sibes]

Hmm, I appreciate the feedback from everyone. I thought he sounded a bit over the top on some issues, and don't agree with everything he says, which is why I wanted some opinions.

So, do you have favorite training methods? I've taken basic classes with Star & clicker training with Rosie (which I hated), Sherman was an angel & didn't need further training, but I need a little help with Jack. He's pretty well behaved overall, but there's a weird dynamic going on between him & Star. He's very headstrong, competitive, and the biggest problem is that he is aggresive towards smaller dogs at the dogpark. It could just be very physical rough husky-style, but it's hard to say. The little dogs don't think so, they freak out. So I haven't been able to let him run off-leash to burn off some of that energy.

I have contacted a couple local trainers but haven't heard anything back yet. Thought if I found dvd's of some good lessons on basic training it would help me cope with him better.