Dogs Do What Works

Hi, I’m Annie!

I’m the author of How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science, and I use this space to write about dogs, behavior, and sometimes about parenting (I have three small humans).

I spent over a decade running a dog training center in New York City called School For The Dogs.¹

At School For The Dogs, I helped thousands of people train their dogs. I also trained dozens of dog lovers to become dog trainers. And I got really comfortable being covered in slobber.

(Some trainers will tell you the job isn’t about playing with dogs and snuggling puppies. But…I tried to do as much of both as possible.)

Over the years, I found that the thing that got me most excited about dog training, however, didn’t actually have to do with dogs. The thing I felt more passionate about was helping people understand the science of behavior.

Dogs are a great entry point into understanding this fascinating (and too often misunderstood) area of natural science. They make it easier to see how behavior works— how it starts, what maintains it, and how it changes — without having to get academic about it.

Dog training is, at its best, a practical way to practice understand behavior and how to influence it without resorting to punishment or coercion.

If you can figure out how to get a dog to stop chewing your couch without being a jerk about it… maybe you are developing a skill translates beyond your living room. That’s the hope, anyway.

Dog training can seem like a very niche area, whether you realize it or not, you are training your dog all the time.

And at the end of the day, they’re going to do.

Not necessarily what you want.
Not necessarily what’s just.
Not necessarily what you’d guess.

Humans aren’t so different. When it comes to training, too often the thing that “works” is, in the bigger picture, not a good idea.

I strongly believe that most popular dog training advice is either too punitive, too jargon-y, or just… wrong.

Here, my goal is to help dog lovers:

• Understand how dogs actually learn

• Train effectively without being a jerk

• Get better seeing the impact of environment on behavior

If you’re new here, here are some places where you can jump in.

Got a burning dog training question? I do periodic Q and A’s, either live or written. You can email me to submit a question.

Thanks for being here.

Best,

Annie

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Footnotes

1. Sadly, I had to close School For The Dogs very suddenly at the beginning of 2025; I wrote a nine-part series about the difficult and nutty events that led up to that; the first part can be found here. ↩