Training Without Conflict Genetic Home Base and Training 100% With Play

If you want to better understand my approach to dog training, here are two very important things about what’s going on in this video.

First, genetic home base.

If you saw my post from a couple days ago, I spoke about Jax being reactive to strange dogs and “nervous” in general.

With a dog like this (and all dogs), you must determine what can be changed and must be controlled and guided.

In that video, I was walking Jax around outside a dog park very close to strange dogs.

Jax was not exploding like he used to.

But, I explain how Jax… because of his genetics... really didn’t like it. He would rather be in a comfortable spot… playing.

And that’s what you see in this video.

This is how Jax should be spending his time.

You can see how comfortable and happy he is.

I have the ability to control and guide him around strange dogs from all the Training Without Conflict concepts I have used. But there is no need to make him live in a world were he is constantly dealing with it.

Now for the second important thing…

“Play based training” is all the rage.

But here’s a question for you.

Are you really training through play… or are you using food to teach behaviors and then adding in play?

Are you mixing food with play?

Teaching the game with an objective and getting cooperation, agreement, compliance, authority, penalties, obedience, etc., etc, etc. all through the game is very different than getting behaviors through reinforcement and punishment.

It is very different from teaching behaviors with food and then playing with the dog. Or using the toy as a reinforcer.

Food and play affect different parts of the brain.

Ivan Balabanov goes into this in great depth in his certification course.

It’s impossible for me to train any other way after really studying this with Ivan, seeing him do it… and doing it so successfully myself on many dogs.

He’s not doing what most people think. And you can’t tell by just watching him.

Matt Welch is a professional dog trainer in Boca Raton, FL certified by 2X world IGP champion, Ivan Balabanov and specializes in Ivan's Training Without Conflict concepts and methods. For an evaluation send a text to: 561-504-1509.