How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD (Formerly known as School For The Dogs Podcast) · Annie Grossman

Why you (maybe) shouldn’t dress up your dog for Halloween (Replay 2021 episode)

·33 min·2 clips

“My advice is don’t do it. Don’t dress up your dog for Halloween.”

She says the episode is a hodgepodge. She has four threads to cover. One is a response to last week's episode. Another is a bit of advice. The other two are personal stories. Halloween is the obvious seasonal question. Listeners have been asking for an episode on it. Her answer is plain and practical. If you want a dog in costume, get the dog used to it well in advance. October is already late for that work. She says this because the idea is simple enough that she hesitates to spend a full episode on it. She then turns to operant conditioning and a story about her daughter. Another story comes from a clever fix she found with her own dog. The show keeps moving between the practical and the personal. It also folds in a response to dog-training rhetoric she finds dangerous. She rejects the idea that fear, intimidation, and woo should pass for expertise. She also pushes back on the claim that dog training is inherently dangerous. Good training, she says, should set dogs up to succeed and lower the chance of bites. She worries that public cases can end up feeding breed fear instead of improving training culture. If a case like that goes to court, she wants the bad methods exposed, not turned into proof that a whole breed is the problem. The episode closes with thanks, a joke about positively reinforcing tooth brushing, and a reminder that training lives in ordinary family routines too.

As heard by us

A Halloween prompt that turns into a clear, humane case for dog training.

This episode opens with a Halloween question and quickly turns into a lesson about timing, patience, and how to get a dog comfortable in a costume without making the night worse for everyone.

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Why you'd press play

Need Halloween dog-costume advice and a plainspoken reminder that training should not rely on fear?

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