When was the last time you used a five-minute down stay with your dog? I'm willing to bet that it was the last time you practiced that in a training class.

There is a lot of stuff that is taught in training classes that seem contained just to the class. I have talked to a lot of people who have never used half of what they learned in their training classes after the course was over. That's crazy!

It is not their fault at all though. It is the fault of the class they took. Do I think they were learning things that were pointless? Not at all. I think they were being taught out of context.

I was guilty of this when I first started training. I would go over the mechanics of specific cues and that was it. A sit was a sit. A stay was a stay. I would show people how to do all of these things with their dogs but never took the next step of showing them how to actually use it.

Now, all of my training has a context. Sit is no longer just a command, it is a tool. We go over how we...