Excerpts From "The Joyful Puppy: A Montessori Approach To Training Your Dog"

Our Philosophy
Welcome! The Joyful Puppy Foundation is a non-profit organization located in Davis, California that aims to support and guide your dog’s true, normal nature by giving them freedom in their environment. We view dogs as having an inner natural guidance for their own perfect self-directed development. A dog’s human companion is never viewed as an ‘owner’ or ‘master’. Rather, the role of a human in our training method is that of a guide, there to determine when the dog is ready for a new challenge.

Why ‘Commands’ Don’t Work
……All dogs have inherent inner directives from nature that guide their true normal development. By restricting the individual liberty of a dog to choose its own activities, the dog cannot progress to its natural state of being. Rather than employing the normal system of rewards and punishments for misbehavior, a guide must learn to refocus the dog back to a purposeful activity where they have observed success. If, for example, your labrador/pit bull mix continues to attack the smaller dogs and children in the neighborhood, try gently coaxing it away with a stick or piece of organic beef jerky.......

Curriculum Overview*
……The natural development of a dog proceeds through several distinct planes of development, each one having its own unique conditions and sensitive periods for acquiring basic faculties in the developmental process. The first plane (ages 0–6 months) involves basic personality formation and learning through physical senses. Sniffing other dogs butts and chewing on various personal items and furniture should be encouraged at this stage, as it strengthens your dog’s tactile curiosity. By chewing up your favorite pair of shoes or the blanket your grandmother made for you, your dog is identifying these things as part of his environment. Dogs are naturally perceptive and your tears of despair will eventually tell him ‘no’.

The second plane of development (6–12 months) involves learning through abstract, non-verbal reasoning, developing through a sensitivity for imagination and social interaction with others. Your dog will learn not to pee or make a doody in the house by watching you and other dogs relieve yourselves in the backyard or, for you apartment dwellers, on your nearest mailbox. During this plane of development, your dog’s ability to understand and remember visual sequences, interpret the meaning of the visual presentations given to him and understand the relationship between these concepts is at its peak. At this age, a healthy dog can easily come up with visual analogies, and recognize the cause-and-effect relationship in between a sequence of situations. We instruct our humans to lavish praise upon themselves when they have successfully ‘done their business’ outside and to reward themselves with a treat in front of their canine companion. Non-verbal reasoning is important to your dog as it becomes more equipped in analyzing and solving complicated problems without depending on their non-existent language abilities.
These lessons are given in such a way that the human guide carefully shows the precise use of materials, through isolated movements or steps, so as to leave the dog with a high potential for success and not to interfere with the dog's own free learning………

*Disclaimer
These statements are not approved or endorsed by the American Kennel Club (AKC), Fédération Cynologique Internationale, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, PETA, or any law enforcement agency in either the United States or, internationally.