Having grown up in a working Dog environment Dave it was well noted that he had a natural affinity with Dogs, this was built on with the teachings of the stockmen of the Outback, each passing on their ways of dog handling and communication, after all the relationship a man and his dog have in the bush is about as pure a relationship can get. Added to this Dave spent many years wondering the globe, observing the intriguing dog packs that were overrunning the cities of Romania following the Ceauşescu's Regime, the pack hounds of the fox Hunters of Great Britain, The husky teams of Scandinavian, the gun dogs of Northern Italy, the Wolves of Mongolia, the Dingoes of his homeland and the Traditional Community Dogs whilst living with the Wik People of Cape York Peninsula to name a few.

This incredible and vast experience with dogs has helped form a philosophy which is allowing people to unlock their own relationships with their canine companion, to achieve the ultimate goal of having the dog you want from the dog you've got.

Although Dave comes from a background where dogs are integral to the working life of a farm he makes no judgements on the reasons why people have dogs. He has worked with families who have dogs for a plethora of reasons such as protection, compaionionship for only children, food scrap consumption and even as fashion items. As long as the owners understand the reason they have a dog they can give their canine family member a purpose.

Giving your dog a purpose opens up a whole world of interaction and enrichment.

When dogs first entered the social groups of humans all those millennia ago they did so because they, as the humans did, got something out of it. Dogs are highly inquisitive creatures most thrive on adventures and exploration and allow your dog to know his purpose is to direct that enthusiasm to give an outcome that is pleasurable to all of us. Dogs give us companionship, security  and enjoyment as we do them, however we also need to give them the rules and boundaries of our society just as we teach our human citizens what is required when we are all living together.

Without question society falls to pieces when we lose order, just as a household becomes a nightmare when rules are not followed and mayhem ensures, we have the benefit in say a city like Sydney of the use of English to convey the rules of our society and what is expected of us, we also have many non-English universal cues such as traffic lights, street signs and pavement markings. When a message needs to be conveyed to people of non-English speaking backgrounds the most simple form of that message is employed such as picture graphs...these are best noted on Bondi beach of a NO Swimming Sign in the form of a  picture or up in the tropical north of a Crocs here sign with a picture. However dogs can't speak English and don't read signposts, so we have to communicate in a way that the dog understands the rules we want to emplace so that we all get long together.

Canine Communication is just like that of communicating with someone of a different language and culture group, you need to find a way that conveys the message in the most comfortable way, remember Captain Cook sailed the world and communicated with hundreds if not thousands of different groups of people and 'mostly ' was able to do it in a friendly way, unfortunately for him the language and cultural barriers in the Hawaiian Islands proved the importance of understanding the rules and boundaries and the most positive way of conveying that message.

All different ways of communicating with dogs are used around the world every day, some involve yelling, belting, ignoring, feeding, whistling and praising, as Captain Cook found with the peoples of the world you no doubt have found with dogs there is always a different approach with each individual that achieves the desired outcome.

Positive Reinforcement training is a way of communicating with a dog to allow it to very quickly comprehend the message you are trying to convey and respond accordingly without any detrimental effects, and this is the key to achieving the best fundamental changes in behaviour you desire with your dog. Whilst belting a dog may stop it from jumping up, you will also find a host of side effects that you did not intend on getting from the exchange, mainly due to the fact that you did not give the dog the information to let him know what you actually wanted of him, you just gave him the information on what you didn't want.

Giving your dog just the information of what you want of him is what Positive Reinforcement training is all about, and due to the fact that dogs have the hard wiring to fit into human society thanks to evolution and selective breeding, he actually really does want to please you and learn what you have to teach him and lead him.

There are many ways to train a dog, and remember training is just allowing the dog to communicate with us by giving him the skills to comprehend our messages we send, these can be verbal and non-verbal such as hand signs, body movements and whistles and its a two-way street; we also need to comprehend what a dog is communicating to us....its a mutual relationship after all, and we all know that its fine to get told what to do all the time but its not that rewarding and we will probably gravitate to someone who will listen to us...dogs are the same...and when a dog has tried and tried to communicate that it doesn’t like having its tailed pulled by a boisterous toddler that is when he resorts to the only thing he has left....to get the message across to stop.

So conveying messages in Dave’s Method is all about doing it in a positive way to achieve the behaviour that you want , as well to still convey to the dog the messages of disproval just as he does to back to you, in a firm and final way that does not involve body contact, but body movements and verbalisations, in a similar way that dogs do amongst themselves when communicating boundaries they have for each other.

SO the basics of Dave’s Method are:

• understanding why we have a dog
• giving the dog a purpose, that is a job with structure and rewards
• communicating with Positive Reinforcers
• giving firm and final verbalisations and signals as to the boundaries and rules we require
• achieving trust between canine and human to open the doors to a mutually enriching environment
• exercising and spending quality time together to ensure the  lines of communication remain open and the bonds strong

Whilst Dave  doesn’t profess to have all the answers on dog training what he does have are the keys to allowing you to get the dog you want from the dog you've got in the gentle positive way.