I read her book and watched her DVD years ago, I took bits and pieces from it that I felt would benefit my dog, but ultimately not everything as all of it wasn't suited to my particular dog.

It's all about finding what works for individual dogs afterall. Without the use of violence and pain, of course.

I didn't/don't follow exact ways of training, I look for what works for an individual dog and I have a fantastic bond with both my dogs. I use less clicker training, for example, with Roxy than I do with Molly. Molly is so switched on to the clicker, Roxy not so much! She prefers the use of voice and is more responsive.

Not speaking for Lynn, but from my own point of view, we all make mistakes at some time or other in our lives,a nd we don`t realise they are mistakes till its to late .

Exactly right. It was lucky we had a very soft cuddly dog when we went wrong, it sounds like unluckily Lynn had a more challenging individual so the mistake was magnified by the unwanted behaviours.

Hi Florence if you do an advanced search for JF (see the task bar above) you will find numerous threads on the subject some very interesting .

JFs books were given to me as a gift soon after they were published. I find many of her ideas to be outdated and too reliant on the pack theory based on the behaviour of wolves. For me there is too much lumping all dogs together without considering the needs of the individual dog .

Yep and that's what positive reward based trainers do too.

It's simple really because we are not born with knowledge so tend to seek it from those we feel are good at what they do. Where it gets complicated is that we have celebrity dog trainers so when unsure, they must know what they are doing so they must be right - yes?

NO, often NOT

It is hard. When I started training with my old fox hound rescue at a dog training club I felt disillusioned and like they were just humouring me because he was never going to win a competition. Things took ages to teach him because we were told you had to push the dogs bum to get them to sit, and pull them to you to heel etc. It panicked him and made it hard for him to contrary as he been physically punished in his previous homes, let alone the fact that this makes you battle against the dogs natural oppositional reflex. ....so it makes it even harder for the dog to learn what to do when it's body is trying to push back to any pressure.

When I stumbled apon an APDT class and discovered clicker training and positive reinforcement and shaping....everything clicked and made perfect sense! I wondered why on earth anyone tried any other type of training....and still do!

Yes. I agree with this re. Jan Fennell. Whilst her apparent methods aren't seemingly aggressive, her beliefs are well out of date and too much pack therory reliant.

True and a fair point. You could also argue though that if you know and see something is not working, then you look elsewhere for something that does. I guess this shows that everyone is different, just like dogs are.

Trouble is when you realise it isn't working you start to think you are doing it wrong so redouble your efforts, then when you realise the reason it isn't working is because your dog is not wired that way you have well and truely fallen in love with them so rehoming to someone who can make a difference is really hard to do. I admire Lynn for being able to do it.

We made mistakes with Duncan and just held on in there for the years he was with us, when he died we were heart broken but looking back now if we had been less in love with him we may have helped him early on to over come some of his problems.