asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: An open letter to Buck Brannaman
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/01/an-open-letter-to-buck-brannaman.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Tuesday, January 31, 2012. An open letter to Buck Brannaman. In the interests of greater harmony. Like many who dwell outside the rarefied world of horses and horsepeople, I only recently became acquainted with Buck Brannaman's life and work through the beautiful documentary film Buck. November 4, 2011. Imagine that someone who’d seen the film The Horse Whisperer. The power of repetition. Offering a good deal; always as...
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: If you can't say something nice...
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/03/if-you-cant-say-anything-nice.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Sunday, March 4, 2012. If you can't say something nice. Don't say anything at all? Nice to say, but it's actually not so nice to end our discussions there. But I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in craving the challenges that difficult conversations supply, or in finding them tremendously rewarding not just despite of but because of. At the moment that this conundrum is weighing on my mind. I put a hold on it at the...
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Partners at the dance
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/04/partners-at-dance_30.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Monday, April 30, 2012. Partners at the dance. Less Cajun, more surrender. I was looking for when I first attended a lesson at Berkeley's Ashkenaz Community Center ( still going strong, I'm happy to see. But I found a lot more than I could have guessed I would. Surrender" had always been a dirty word in my book, its uncounted pleasures all guilty and corrosive to self-respect. So I thought. Resistance in the moment was ...
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Get it right from the wolf's mouth
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-leap-into-mouth-of-wolf.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Friday, August 31, 2012. Get it right from the wolf's mouth. Photo by Tambako the Jaguar. There are many good reasons (honest! That I haven't posted here in so long, but the best of them is that I've been working on a spanking new blogsite, The Mouth of the Wolf. What does this mean for As Good As I Wanna Be. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). Serving humans and dogs in Portland, OR. Get it right from the wolfs mouth.
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Just extremely cool
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/06/just-extremely-cool.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Tuesday, June 5, 2012. There was a lot to enjoy and a lot to learn from Dr. Reiss's mostly informal account of her research into cetacean thinking (she was there to promote her new book, Dolphin in the Mirror. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). And welcome to this baggy, meandering investigation of our capacity for change. I'm a writer, dog trainer, recovering theatre academic, and dedicated anthropomorphist, livin...
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Prelude to the dance
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/03/prelude-to-dance.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Friday, March 16, 2012. Prelude to the dance. I'm fickle that way. When I was a theatre scholar (a role I never wore all that convincingly), I loved the idea. Wow, hey. Some expunge the embarrassment of being mere doodlers and dreamers by becoming utterly prosaic (and untrained) scientists. Others eventually take up dog training. Ha. Loose, sloppy, idle, playful, inexact - these are just some of the many strengths of li...
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Rethinking negative reinforcement
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/02/rethinking-negative-reinforcement.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Sunday, February 26, 2012. Animals in a state of relief. As I wrote in my last post regarding the increasingly fuzzy distinction between classical and operant conditioning, old terminology can hobble new thinking, and given how awkward the language of behaviorism was at its inception, we shouldn't be surprised to discover how creaky it has become in its dotage. (The surprise lies in its holding up at all! In addition, w...
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...as good as I wanna be...: I love you, dammit!!
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-love-you-dammit.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Monday, January 30, 2012. I love you, dammit! I really regret that our next client was waiting and we weren't able to give the question the attention it deserves, because it's loaded. But we had to leave it at that. But touch is critical at that early stage in part because it is instructive. A mother's or other's tactile tenderness teaches us what kind. Of touch is safe, and when. Squirming, jostling littermates and hum...
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Calm before assertive
http://asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com/2012/01/calm-before-assertive.html
As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Friday, January 27, 2012. I recently picked up Cesar's Rules. Millan laments that many of his critics lambaste him without taking the trouble to understand his teachings, but I think he should worry at least as much about those who lionize. Him without taking the trouble to understand his teachings, or more importantly, without mastering the knowledge and skills that would enable them to employ his methods with relative.
asgoodasiwannabe.blogspot.com
...as good as I wanna be...: Marker training basics I
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As good as I wanna be. Dog training as spiritual practice and intellectual adventure. Wednesday, January 4, 2012. Marker training basics I. Worth a thousand words? On the definition and choice of a marker. Marker training falls under the larger umbrella of positive training methods; indeed, it's something we all practice whenever we say "good dog! But a solid understanding of how and why it works can help us practice it much more deliberately and effectively. As with the "good dog! I like that behavior.