The Premack principle suggests that if a dog wants to perform an activity (a high frequency behavior / eating ice cream), they’ll be willing to perform a less desirable activity (low frequency behavior / eating spinach) in order to do so.  The less desirable behavior can be reinforced by the more desirable behavior.  In dog training this means that we can harness the exciting, motivating power of our dog’s favorite behaviors as reinforcers for the behaviors we want them to do.  We can string behavior routines together to charge each step with the positive association of a primary reward.

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There was a beagle in the UC Berkeley dog behavior study named after Ian’s first wife (Jamie’s mom), Mimi.  Mimi the beagle was central to more than one incident that would profoundly shape Ian’s understanding of dog behavior and temperament.  It revealed just how fundamentally a dog’s temperament could be changed, especially confronted with the power of the pack.  It also led Ian to develop the notion of subliminal bite stimuli, the idea that there can be multiple factors that lead to a sudden explosion of