School For The Dogs Podcast

The sprightly Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo has gained worldwide acclaim for essentially being an excellent trainer of humans. Specifically, she trains people to "tidy up" their homes. While she might be adept at using positive reinforcement (mostly in the form of her sheer enthusiasm about junk drawers) and other methods that dovetail with Good Dog Training, her approach also  encourages people to attach their actions to part in certain bizarre "superstitious" behaviors. like verbally "thanking" pieces of clothing and "waking up" sleeping books by tapping them. In this episode, Annie, who believes that  behavior-changing techniques should appeal more to common sense than to magical thinking,  talks about how Kondo and famous dog trainers like Barbara Woodhouse and Cesar Millan douse snake oil over their proposed solutions in order to suggest that clutter is caused by sleeping books,  dogs love the letter T, and nice leash walking can only happen if you channel amorphous invisible powers. Notes: Marie