Max Von Stephanitz

* Created April 22, 1899 the German SV Club for the German Shepherd's Dog
* Partly responsible for the development of German Police Dog Training (Schutzhund)
* 1921 , book, "The German Shepherd's Dog In Word and Picture"

1880'S

Montague Stevens trains his New Mexico bear dogs by rewarding them with pieces of bread instead of beating and kicking them as others of that era were generally doing. Stevens is a famous bear hunter and friend of Teddy Roosevelt and the sculptor Frederic Remington.

1886

Edward Thorndike develops a theory of learning based on stimulus and response. Thorndike shows that "practice makes perfect" and that if reinforced with positive rewards, animals can learn quickly.

1885

S.T. Hammond, a writer for Forest and Stream magazine advocates in his columns and in a book entitled Practical Training, that dogs should be praised and rewarded with meat when they do something right.

1899

The first canine school for police dogs is started in Ghent, Belgium using Belgian Shepherds, which had recently been established as a breed.

1903

Ivan Pavlov publishes his experiments with dogs and digestion, noting that animals can be trained to have a physical response to stimuli. Pavlov called this learning process "conditioning," and in 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research.

Col. Konrad Most

Typical of the sad state of Dog information, many sites / articles call this guy the 'father of modern dog training' but it is so difficult to find anything on the web about him. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia Article.

* Father of modern "traditional" dog training
* Started training Service Dogs in 1906 * Trained military dogs in Germany at the turn of the 20th Century.
* His book, Training Dogs - A Manual, was published in German in 1910
* Wasn't translated into English until 1954,
* Techniques rely on collar corrections and punishment are considered and heavy-handed
* Methods are based on the principles of operant learning that form the basis of clicker training.

1917

* Germans begin to formally use dogs to guide soliders blinded in mustard gas attacks.

Lt. Colonel Edwin Hautenville Richardson

* Created Britain's War Dog School and Military Working Dog programs
* Book "My Forty Years With Dogs, 1918
* EH Richardson's books, that were used as training manuals by the United States' Quartermaster Corps, in 1942 when this country started its first official K-9 Army.

Josef Weber

* Student Of Konrad Most
* Was an instructor in the Berlin Police Force. * The Dog in Training, 1939
* Emigrated to Philadelphia
* Developed procedures for teaching guide dogs for people who were blind.
* Student in the U.S. was Blanche Saunders

Hans Tosutti

* Student Of Konrad Most
* Companion Dog Training, 1942
* Emigrated to Boston
* 1928 or 1936, founded the New England Dog Training Club
* Oldest existing AKC member obedience training club in the USA
* Practical trainer of dogs for sport and for war service; whose work has included Red Cross carriers (messages and ammunition), police service, motion picture and stage performers and leaders of the blind.
* One of the organizers of the blind-leading school in Potsdam, Germany, and police-service dog-guide and instructor in Berlin, he made his ring debut under the highest world authority, the late Captain von Stephanitz.
* Most famous student of all was probably his own Shepherd, Bodo von der Mueritz, known the country over from 1925 to 1932 in motion picture work.

1915

Edwin Richardson trains dogs for the military during WWI using some positive reinforcement, and the dogs prove to be quick studies. Many dogs are used for communication and for guard duty..

Lee Duncan, Rin Tin Tin

* September 15, 1918 discovers Rin Tin Tin as a new born puppy during world war one in a bombed out German war dog kennel in France
* Learned the secrets of German War Dog Training from a captured German Kennel Master retained in a POW camp.
* Head trainer at Camp Hahn for WWII and infusing German war dog methods into the American military working dog program.
* Movies that are so successful - saves Warner Brothers studio from bankruptcy.
* Wrote a book titled "The Rin Tin Tin Book of Dog Care" in 1958.
* Dog dies in 1932 in neighbor Jean Harlow's arms, and is buried in Paris

Weatherwaxx Family

* Lassie and Old Yeller are perhaps the two most famous dogs trained by this family

Arlene Erlanger

* Wrote the first American war dog manual; titled TM-10-396l
* Organized the 'Dogs for Defense' program during WWII
* Helped greatly by Henry Stoeker her kennel manager
**** This man was a second generation military/police dog trainer.
**** This man was a second generation military/police dog trainer.
**** This man played a central role in the entire creation of the WWII War Dog program in America and that we should thank him for bringing the methods to North America.

Henry Stoeker

* Kennel manager for Arlene Erlanger
* Organized the 'Dogs for Defense' program during WWII
* Immigrated to America from Germany in the 1920's, bringing with him real German training secrets.
* Played a central role in the entire creation of the WWII War Dog program in America

1925

* One of the very first German-trained guide dogs for the blind is given to Helen Keller.

Carl Spitz

* German immigrant and student of Col. Konrad
* Opens the Hollywood Dog Training School in California in 1927
* Trainer of the film star dog named Toto in the Wizard of Oz.
* One of the men responsible for setting up America's WWII War-Dog Program
* Involved in classified elite K-9 units such as the K-9 Commando program.
* His immigration to southern California is in large part the reason that southern California would go on to become a hotbed of dog training activity in America
* Bill Koehler dedicated his book on tracking dogs to Carl Spitz.

1929: Dorothy Harrison Eustis

* Establishes the Seeing Eye Foundation to train guide dogs for the blind

* Captain Will Judy ?

? RESEARCH ?

Helen Whitehouse Walker

* Devised the first obedience "test" in Mt. Kisco, New York in 1933 to show the intelligence of her poodles

1938: B.F. Skinner

* Begins research into operant conditioning as a scientifically-based learning model for animals and humans. His special focus is on teaching pigeons.

Blanche Saunders

* Training You To Train Your Dog (NY: Doubleday, 1946) * The Complete Book of Dog Obedience, 1954 and The Story of Dog Obedience, 1974
* Saunders and Helene Whitehouse Walker are the originators of AKC Obedience trials
* Traveled around the country spreading the concept of companion dog training
* Saunders' students and followers were many of the well-known trainers of the 1950's and 60's, including Winifred Strickland.
* First book written specifically for obedience instructors and in it, Saunders outlined the format for procedures that would be adopted in dog training classes across the country.
* Known as 'The First lady of Obedience', she personally trained over 12,000 pupils in here lifetime.
* This woman did a tremendous amount for the sport of obedience trials. Most of the rules she created for trials still exist and stand to this very day.

Winifred Strickland

* Student of Blanche Saunders
* Began competing in obedience in the early 1940's.
* An AKC obedience judge, was one of the earliest “super trainers.” She earned 160 obedience titles, 40 perfect scores, 30 utility titles, three obedience trial championships, five national obedience championships, five tracking titles, plus hundreds of high awards. .
* In her book book Expert Obedience Training for Dogs in 1965, Strickland outlined a sequenced curriculum for novice through utility training. She said that her method would produced dogs that were eager to work.

1943

* Marion Breland and her husband Keller Breland form a company called Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE) to teach animals for shows.
* Graduate students of B.F. Skinner * Began teaching animals to perform tricks for shows and for commercial clients such as dog-food maker General Mills.
* Pioneer the use of a "clicker" to teach animals at a distance and to improve timing for affirmations and delayed rewards.
* first people in the world to train dolphins and birds using operant conditioning.

Keller Breland, Marion Bailey

* Graduate students of B.F. Skinner
* Early 1940s
* Early '40's, they started Animal Behavior Enterprises - a business that trained and provided scores of animal species for commercial purposes.

Keller Breland

* First dog trainer to use a clicker
* 1950's Marineland hired him to develop a training program for their marine mammals
* Devised the system of marine mammal training that is still in use today.
* Worked in a variety of locations, including Sea Life Park, which was then owned by Karen Pryor and her husband.

1949

* Austrian animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz writes "Man Bites Dog" and "King Solomon's Ring," books which popularize animal behaviorism.

Konrad Lorenz

* Ethology

* Regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, * Man Meets Dog is a zoological book for the general audience, 1949
* Focus is on the behavior of dogs.
* Controversial writings during the Nazi regime, which he addressed, took full blame for... later in his life. * Supported the fledgling Austrian Green Party

Ethology

* branch of zoology

* The scientific study of animal behavior, * Ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s
* Begun By Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, joint winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

William Koehler

* Began his dog training career in the U.S. Military during the World War II
* Training site was near the San Francisco bay area and was home to so many Military dogs and trainers it became known as "Dog Town".
* 1960s,
* The Koehler Method of Dog Training, 1962 or '63
* "The Koehler Method of Dog training" was his first book written in 1963
* Brutal, Brutal, Brutal * Book was, and may still remain, the all-time best selling dog training book
* Hollywood dog trainer
* Chief animal trainer for Walt Disney Studios
** Trained the dog 'Bullet' which starred in Roy Rodgers
** Trained the Great Danes which starred in 'The Swiss Family Robinson'
** An Irish setter in 'Big Red'
** 'Asta' in 'The Thin Man'
** Very large cast of dogs in 'It's a Dogs Life"
** Shaggy Dog, Savage Sam, The Ugly Dachshund, The Incredible Journey, Toby Tyler, Boomerang.
* The basis for virtually all dog training from the 1950's into the '70's.

Milo Pearsall

* 1958 book Dog Obedience Training has been billed as a book that revolutionized dog training with a more gentle approach.
* Used snapping on the leash as a correction in teaching heeling, to get the dog to sit, and to improve attentiveness
* Like many trainers, did not use the operant conditioning definition of punishment.
* “Keep also in mind that the dog is never punished. He is corrected. He does not, and never will, understand punishment.”
* Suggested that owners push their dog’s noses near the accident (not in it)