A well-trained dog is a dog that is pleasant to be around. It is a dog that responds to your commands and anticipates what you are going to do or say in its presence. It is also a dog that is far less likely than a poorly trained dog to attack a human or animal [...]
Why Use a Crate? Crate training a dog taps into a dog’s instincts as a den animal. The notion is that the crate becomes your dog’s “den” and allows him to have a place to take refuge, relax, and sleep. Due to this “den” effect, crates can be used effectively to assist in house [...]
Many of my clients have dogs that fall into the “reactive” dog category. With dogs like that, at some point, we almost always do some work with their dog wearing a muzzle when we get closer to triggers. I use a muzzle in training periodically for three reasons. MUZZLES IN TRAINING 1. In many cases, the [...]
As you can imagine, many of my clients have more than one dog. They often call me because they realize that training more than one dog at a time is a little harder than training just one dog. I thought I’d share with you the game-plan that I give these clients in the event that [...]
We all have ways we like to entertain ourselves; some of us watch TV, some of us read a book, while some of us might even play a game on our phones. It’s a given that you need a certain amount of enjoyable stimulation to stay happy and healthy. In fact, you may have noticed, on days [...]
One of the top reasons people call us is that their dog jumps up on everyone that visits. Many clients have been to obedience class, hired trainers, read books and watched TV shows to try to solve the problem. I had a conversation a couple of days ago with a client that’s pretty typical of [...]
The Issue Many people who call me about training have “leash pulling” in their top three things they want to fix on their list of issues. That actually works out well, because it’s the first thing that we address in lesson one. It’s not so much that pulling on a leash is the most egregious [...]
I can’t tell you how many clients, soon after adopting a dog from their local shelter, have said to me, “he was so great the first couple of weeks, and then all these behaviors started to show up”. In most cases, there is a “honey moon phase” with a new dog in your home. While [...]
DON’T JUMP RIGHT IN (pun sort of intended) A great many clients tell me that bath time is a total “nightmare”. When this comes up, I rarely ”jump right in”,and teach clients the coaching process for fixing this. I know, it seems kinda cruel to not just address the issue that is foremost on a client”s [...]
I had a discussion, with a prospective client a few months back, that I thought might be good “food for thought” regarding the topic of whether training a dog is detrimental for his spirit . Now, the names and identifying facts have been changed to protect the identity of this person, however, I should tell you that this story [...]