Dog Training Services

We offer the following positive reinforcement dog training sessions:

Dog training is your dog's on the job training course.

Remember your very first job? If you're like most people you probably didn't start out as the CEO of the company. You probably started off at the very bottom and bit by bit as you gained experience in how to do the simple things you were given more complicated tasks to accomplish and more responsibility in the company. Well, that's just how dog training works.

On your first day in your first job your employers expectations were probably rather low and finite. You were expected to show up on time, dress appropriately, stay on task, complete your work and keep your extracurricular activities( personal phone calls, surfing the net, gossiping) to a minimum. Most of us went through a Training Program of one kind or another to teach us how to do the tasks we had agreed to do in exchange for our paycheck.

Now, imagine that instead of going through a training program your boss chucked you on the shoulder and told you to just 'make the job your own.' What would you do? Probably at first, you'd freak out a bit - after you finished your Free Money Happy Dance. I mean you've never worked a day in your life, you don't know the company, you don't know what the job entails, you don't even know where the bathrooms are or what time your lunch break is scheduled or if you even Get a lunch break. So, what do you do?

The more enterprising amoung us would either search around for something, anything to do, or go in search of someone else within the company to give us an idea of what to do next. Others of us would find the closest dark corner, pop out a book and wait until someone found us. Fair enough. But the point is that it's an unfair position to be put into, whether your a kid with his first job or a dog in a new home.

Dog training is all about Communication and Education. That's it. It's not about control, it's not about dominance, it's not about establishing yourself as the Holy Alpha of your pack. Dog training is about communication and education.

Now to go back to our analogy of our first job, can you remember what your first job training experience was like? It was probably either mind numbingly boring or extremely cursory. You either had to spend a week watching painfully awful 'training tapes': or someone covered all of your new job duties in one long rushed sentence, thrust a broom into your hand, told you that you could ask them anything and disappeared. Or they got mad at you for not being perfect straight out of the box, grabbed the broom back from you and ranted and raved about how it was just easier to do it themselves. You wouldn't learn much from any of these training scenarios other than spending your life working for someone else really pretty much blows.

There is a learning curve every time we begin to learn a new skill. Some skills are easier to master than others but all of them take a certain amount of time to figure out. It's a little known fact that we don't learn from our success, no we don't, we learn from our mistakes. That's what a learning curve tracks, our progress as we learn from our mistakes and perfect our understanding and skills. Usually by the time we master something we're bored with it and ready to move on to bigger and better things. It's the mistakes that keep us fascinated. That's why people play golf and dedicate their lives to things like music and art, perfection is impossible in these pursuits. That's why we like them. But that's also why I do not use choke collars, prong collars, shock collars (shudders) or any form of punishment while teaching a dog new tricks. It's counter productive. If we only learn by making mistakes, then punishing someone for making a mistake makes no sense.

Punishment in any form is designed to inflict pain and fear in order to get someone else to do what we want them to do. Pure and simple. It's is not educational and it is definitely not empowering. Being punished is scary, disheartening and depending on your dog's background, potentially lethal to the disciplinarian as well. Corduroy and I have spent much of the last 10 years working almost exclusively with dog who exhibit aggressive and other quirky behaviors. Trust me, punishing a dog who is acting out aggressively doesn't end well for either of you. I strongly suggest that you take punishment out of your dog training bag of tricks. It doesn't work, it's never worked and using punishment as a dog training method can get you into a lot of trouble very, Very quickly. But more about the different dog training methods later.

Now, imagine that on your very first day at your very first job you were allowed to roam around and poke into things. TO get your bearings at your own pace and in your own way. Imagine that you were allowed to walk into every office or every section of the business and ask what the people working there were doing, why they did it that way, how it fit into the grand scheme of things and how your job duties complemented or supported your co-workers. Everyone was nice to you, everyone took the time to explain it to you and everyone really was ready and willing to answer all of your questions in a kind and detailed or simple manner, depending on what was appropriate at the time. Then, once you understood what was going on, what the objectives of the business were and how you fit into the whole, your trainer took you by the hand and showed you how not only to do your specific current job but also explained what would come next if you did it well? Your trainer would be knowledgeable about the entire company, know your job inside and out and have several different ways of explaining of your duties to you so that you understood them fully. They would also go at Your Pace so if you found something easy to understand or do, they wouldn't make you go through the entire training module for that specific job but skip ahead to the next item on your list. And imagine, if you can, if they were ALWAYS available to answer your questions and support you as you went through your day. Not in a cloying, micro managing sort of way but in an empowering, supportive role. Sounds like job nirvana, doesn't it? But wouldn't you be excited to get there each morning and be motivated to do your very best? What if, and I know that this is stretching it, but just imagine if not only did you have someone there if you needed them but every time you did something right, someone noticed and gave you a reward that you found rewarding so that you KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were, in fact, doing a good job and doing your job well? Ahhh, bliss. You'd work there until your dying day happily, eagerly and you'd do your darnedest to maintain that kind of working environment until the end of time by paying it forward at every opportunity.

Our goal is to help you establish that kind of ideal working environment for your dog. Yes, it takes a bit of fore-thought and pre-planning but the rewards are priceless. You and your dog become a team, real partners and you can go anywhere and do anything together knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that you have one another's backs and can trust one another implicitly no matter kind of situation you find yourselves in. That, my friends, is what living with a dog is all about.

The good news is that it's not difficult to do. A couple packages of chicken hot dogs cut up into nickles, or a bucket of Freeze Dried Liver Treats, a no-frills nylon harness, a 6 foot leash and an old beach blanket are all you need to create the relationship of your dreams with your dog. 3-5 training sessions a day for 3-5 minutes each session is all it takes. Truly. You have time to do this. The pay offs are beyond belief.

Now, to help you get started we offer the following:

- Group Training Classes - Dog Dinner Club Group Training Classes - Private Training Sessions - Drop In Group Training Classes (coming soon) - Dog Training Skill Sheets (coming soon) - "Wags and Waves" Dog Training Advice Newsletter (coming soon)

You can also e-mail me at any time to ask questions, express your concerns or to make an appointment for a private training session. As you can probably tell, this is a brand new website and I haven't figured out how to set up my e-mail account yet so the best e-mail address for me right now is laughingpaws@msn.com.