This is Ron’s followup to the Try This segment on our weekly 1/2 hour dog training and lifestyle series on YouTube, Pawsitive Vybe.

This is a few minutes of a human clicker game we played at a recent Discdog B&B. The idea here is to teach a person to perform a skill using a clicker and to talk about some of the nuances in communicating and teaching your dog.

Performance can be based upon conceptual or contextual understanding. How does a handler communicate conceptual understanding to the dog and avoid performance based on the context of the situation? It’s simple, but not easy…

More lessons in this series:

Human Clicker Game
Context vs Concept

Performance is not understanding. Just because your dog has done or is doing a behavior doesn’t mean they understand what it is they are doing.

One of the biggest problem dog trainers have is the idea that, ”My dog knows that,” when in fact, it is highly likely that the dog merely does that in that one particular situation. There’s a huge difference between your dog’s performance of a skill and their understanding. Performance is what you do and Understanding is what you know.

This might seem a trivial or semantical distinction, but it is not. It is a critical component of generalizing skills and behavior. Handler’s that fail to understand this distinction have dogs that have problems generalizing behavior and are largely responsible for the perpetuation of the myth that “Dogs don’t … Read More »

Ron & Leilani, 12 year old Border Collie, do some Frisbee Dog Flatwork focusing on the Rear Cross and good work on the Flank.

Ron Watson gives Loot, 15 month old Border Collie rescue, an introduction to disc dog Flatwork.

For the last 47 days we have been running a project on Indiegogo to crowdfund Season 2 of the PVybe Life. It was a great experience. All told we brought in right around $3000 in gear and cash from the project, not the $5466 we were looking for, but we got lots of support from a bunch of cool people, we got a gopro action camera and we are going to use the funds to get a new main camera and new wireless mic system for the show, and that’s pretty awesome!

Over the next few weeks we will be making good on our fulfillment of all of our perks – check your mail – and we will be doing some shopping. We’re looking at starting the show in late April or early May. So exciting.

Big thanks to all of … Read More »

The PVybe Life Season 2 is being crowdfunded over on Indiegogo. Get the skinny on how to support the project and help make Season 2 a reality.

Here’s the third episode of the PVybe Show. We just got done with disc dog camp and got some video of the trip and some personal work with pretty awesome disc doggers.

0:00 – Rajin’ Cajun evaluation

Gail Mirabella, ex-circus performer and a legend in Dog Frisbee stopped by to hang out and to have us eval this awesome Performance Rescue, Cajun.

Cajun is pretty much perfect according to Gail and also according to what we saw here at PVybe HQ while he was here. We didn’t have the camera out much while he was indoors, and Cajun was a bit distracted on the field.

Apryl works some bitework with him and you get a good chance to see what the guy is made of. He’s awesome and available for adoption, as Gail already has 13 dogs on the road, and Cajun doesn’t … Read More »

Well we survived another Christmas. Here’s what went down that week… Episode 2 of our pilot season.

Episode 1 of PVybe Life – a Dog Training variety show by Pawsitive Vybe in Kingston NY.

PVybe Life is a dog training variety show with short edutainment pieces based on our dog training and lifestyle. It’s pretty sweet. Each short segment is linked from the YouTube description page and allows you to surf segment by segment.

Abby Cline of PVybe Fargo teaches a hoop to a client in her Canine Freestyle Class using cookies and reward placement.

Disc Dog Camp at Kat & Jack Fahle’s place in Dade City, FL. 4 days, 3 nights of intensive training.

DOC is our Environmental Management Protocol. It is designed to help dog trainers learn to passively handle their dogs through shaping and reward and repetition.