Training Dogs with Love

As Tamar was training Luke, the pup made a break for the gate and ran out into the street. Because he could have been hit by a car, Tamar decided to teach him a lesson. "It was important not to mince words and to let him know that I'm [not] very happy and to have him associate a lot of pain with that experience," Tamar says.

Tamar started by recreating the situation so she would have control. She put on a disguise—a cowboy hat, a big jacket and boots—so that Luke wouldn't recognize her. She stood just outside the gate, fawning over another dog. "Luke couldn't take it and at one point he came out," Tamar says.

That's when Tamar says she "went wolf" on Luke. "I kind of mimic what wolves do in nature. When they want to be threatening, they raise their hackles, the ears go up, they become very stiff and try to look as big as possible. They focus on you with [an] I'm-gonna-kill-you look and they're almost, like, not breathing," Tamar says.

Without getting physical, Tamar tensed up and screamed, "No, wait!" That got Luke's attention. "You really have to go to town to let the dog know what you mean," she says. "He was like, 'Oops. I never hear her screaming at me. I better go run back home." The moment Luke returned to where he was supposed to be, Tamar used a loving tone of voice to reward him. "That's why you want to make ... your tone of voice to be relevant," she says. "You don't want to be all the time the same."