Trainer i know to the original job start keep center adopted certain standards that we require to certify a service dog. The two most important things a new dog trainer can learn how to accomplish with their dogs are: Engagement simply means your dog wants to be with you and he wants what you have If dog trainers 't have engagement how are they suppose to get a dog to pay attention; how can they train their dog to do anything if the dog doesn't want to be with them. If a dog doesn't want what the trainer has how is he suppose to motivate a dog to perform a behavior Without engagement the only way anyone can get a dog to do something is to FORCE that dog to do what you want it to do. That's exactly what dog trainers like myself did 20 or 40 years ago. I started training dogs the late 1950's. It wasn't pretty but we didn't know any better. This article and the DVDs I have produced are going to teach you how to get a dog engaged with you. Generalization simple means once a dog has learned the meaning of a command he perform that command any location and under distraction. example of a dog that has not yet generalized a command is often seen when a dog owner learns that they can teach their dog a behavior their kitchen but the minute their dog is taken out of the kitchen it seems to forget everything its learned. That's because the dog has not generalized the command. A dog has not generalized a SIT command when it SIT the kitchen or SIT the garage but not SIT when friends come over. A dog has not generalized the DOWN command when it down on its rug your living room but not down your yard when a neighbor is walking his dog past your house. I have been training dogs since the 1950's. It's taken a time and learning failed training methods to settle into a system of dog training that consistently produces dogs that are engaged with me and dogs that generalize the work I am trying to teach them. The DVDs that Leerburg produces support this system of training dogs. We call this system Marker Training. It has evolved into main stream dog training here since the early 1990's. Like trainers I was slow to embrace the concepts of marker training. I had been training dogs for 30 years when marker training first started. I spent the 1990's telling people it was stupid. Well the only stupid one was myself because I never took the time to really study the training system and learned how to apply it to the areas of dog training I had interest Today I tell people that marker training is the most effective training system I have seen 50 plus years of training dogs. It's a black and white method of communication that is based on positive reinforcement. Marker training provides a dog trainer a language that allows him to communicate with his dog the instant his dog does something he likes. It provides a non-punishment method of telling a dog the instant the dog does something you 't like and it provides a motivational method of telling a dog that you like what he is currently doing and you want him to continue to do exactly what he is doing at this moment time. If you stop and think about it, when you can do these three things and do them a fashion that keeps your dog motivated and engaged with his handler then you can teach that dog to do almost anything. Marker training that there are also precise places and times a training program where a dog has to experience a correction for disobedience With this said of the people who brought clicker training to the world of dog training came from training sea mammals and birds. You can't correct a killer whale or a parrot when they disobey. It just doesn't work. These people thought they could apply the same exact training principles to dogs and they convinced a lot of new dog trainers that they were right. Well opinion they were wrong. When I began to marker trained dogs that were energetic well trained animals who loved working with their handlers I started to explore exactly what marker training was all about. That's when I realized how foolish I had been to poo poo the such a great training system. was the person who opened eyes to the fact that markers and corrections can coexist together as part of a training program. The fact since the late 1990's travels around the country giving 40 to 45 weekend seminars a year on his system of using markers training. He recently opened a school San Francisco CA for dog trainers. What I learned is the power of this system lies understanding the details of the program. Dog handlers who master the system become the most successful dog trainers. The truth this statement can be seen videos of old dog competitions from back the 1980' and 1990's. Handlers who won competitions back then