Karen has new blogs up at her site
http://www.northwapiti.com/training.html. She and Utin are doing obedience training and she mentions clicker training. I have been going to classes with Elwood off and on for over a year now, and am a big fan of clicker training. He is what is considered a "reactive" dog--he "reacts" to lots of things-strangers, dogs, tables (today I caught him barking intently at the bistro table in the back yard-it's been there since I brought him home almost 2 years ago).
This despite the fact that he has been clicker trained with basic obedience, agility and is apparently well behaved at his daycare outings with scads of other dogs. Anyway, my trainer suggested a new book "Control Unleashed" by Leslie McDermott. She has a different approach to dealing with reactive dogs, basically her method says that reactive dogs are mostly anxious dogs, and that traditional methods of training often serve to increase the anxiety level. Traditional methods require the dog to focus exclusively on the handler, with corrections given if they lose focus or become agitated. CU "reframes" the event for the dog-for example, they are rewarded for looking at other dogs. The sequence becomes-look at another dog(or kid, or cat or whatever), click, dog turns back to handler for treat-and lo and behold, they have learned a new trick. So instead of increasing the anxiety about something new/different in the environment that they aren't allowed to pay attention to, they start thinking "oh goody, there is something I can look at to get rewarded". Of course, there is a lot of other training/relaxation exercises going on also. My trainer has started a CU class, and after 2 sessions, I must say the results are amazing. On night 2 of class El was able to ignore another very aroused dog walking right by him-before he would have done the lunge/bark routine. One of the other dogs that was so nervous on night one that all she did was bark and pant was able to lay down calmly for most of night two. It has been very interesting so far, I would recommend the book to anyone who has an overanxious, reactive type dog.
but with the kids n dogs summer camp she is doing.