I don’t even know where to begin. I spent a beautiful sunny day in a lecture hall at the UCDavis vet school. With no dogs. A day without dogs? That’s crazy talk. Instead, taking notes and listening to 2 famous scientists talk about training animals. Bob Bailey and Dr. Sophia Yin were talking about “Problem Dogs to High Performance Dogs: How Operant Technology Can Take Your Training to the Next Level”.

I’m not sure what level it’s taking my training to. I took about 400 pages of notes and all I can remember right now is surveillance weaponry training for dolphins and seagulls and stealth satellite guidance for spy dogs. And that I’m a too slow, imprecise dog trainer that probably slouches at all the wrong times.

Dr. Sophia Yin and Bob Bailey are not warm and fuzzy. They are scientists. Tiny little scientists with lots of data. They both want people to get better at training animals. People flew in from all around the world to listen to their words. A lady who runs an animal shelter in Caracas, Venezuela ate lunch with us. There were a handful of agility people in attendance, and then I don’t know who else, I think mostly professional dog trainers? Probably they all have excellent timing and criteria with the exact right rate of reinforcement.

You know who they are, right? Maybe you have already trained chickens with Bob Bailey. Dr. Sophia Yin is a behaviorist from Davis who puts out huge amounts of information to help people be better trainers to their dogs. Both of them really made me want to be a lot less of a slouchy, half assed dog trainer, that’s for sure. Like start all over the beginning. My mind, very blown.