Every dog can be trained and every dog behavior issue can be addressed and rectified.  You can teach an old dog new tricks and you can teach a young dog to behave.  You can teach a dog with fear to be less fearful and you can teach a dog who bites to trust and not to bite.  You can teach a dog to provide services to people.  You can teach obedience to a crazy, energetic dog.  You can teach a dog not to chew furniture.  You can teach a dog to walk and return to you off lead.  You can teach a dog to dance, to do agility, to dive off a dock or to play Frisbee.  What you can teach a dog is almost unlimited…if you can speak their language.

For thousands of years, dogs have had one goal, to make their people happy.  They work diligently every day to do just that.  They know that they will receive rewards (love, affection and treats) for making their people happy so they want to please.  When communication breaks down between you and your dog, your dog has trouble fulfilling his or her mission to please you and that causes stress.  Even though we consider dogs our family members and/or our kids, dogs are different from people.  They speak a different language.  Dogs’ communicate using  body language, facial expressions, peeing and pooping, mouthing, biting and smelling.  Vocalization is low on their list of ways to communicate.  Dogs never stop talking.  They are telling you how they feel when they wake up, when they go outside, when they are eating, when they are playing, when they are fighting, when they are laying around, even when they are sleeping.  People primarily use vocalizations and facial expressions to communicate.  Body language, smelling, mouthing and biting are pretty low on our list of ways to communicate.

You and your dog speak two different languages.  We train dogs.  We can help you with any dog and any behavior problem.  We train dogs and we teach owners dog language and dogs people language.  Once you know dog language, it becomes much easier to get your dog to understand what you want from him or her and much easier for you to understand what your dog is telling you.  Your relationship with you dog improves greatly and your dog is happier because he or she knows what you want and can now fulfill his or her mission to make you happy.

If you have any questions about training your dog or your dog’s behavior, please feel free to contact us.  We offer a free initial consultation to evaluate your dog or dogs and to discuss how we can help you meet your training and behavior goals.  We look forward to meeting you and your pet family members.

~Rob

A note from Rob:

I’ve always trained dogs, as far back as I can remember.  I trained our own dogs, helped neighbors with training and behavior issues and helped strangers with behavior issues all the time.  I used to run the business end of veterinary hospitals.  I truly enjoyed being able to help restrain animals all day long while they were being treated for their medical issues.  I was often the one responsible for supervising the handling of the dogs and cats who did not want to be in the hospital at all.  The more I embraced minimal restraint techniques and positive reinforcement, the more our bite and injury incidents went down.  The nervous pets learned to trust us more, so they bit and struggled less.  I equally enjoyed helping our clients manage their pets’ behavior and training issues at home.  The best results always came from positive techniques.

My view of training and behavior modification changed tremendously when working with one of our own dogs.  We have a 3 year old Belgian Malinois who we became our family member when he was a puppy.  In his early days, he had a couple of what are known as single event fear drivers.  From those experiences, he became reactive to all kinds of things; bicycles, cars, people and dogs were just a few.  The training I knew didn’t help our Malinois so I went on a search to figure out how to help him.  In my search, I found a new philosophy of training that is science based, thoroughly researched (by animal behaviorists) and highly effective.  Training and behavior modification revolve around positive reinforcement and allowing the fearful, reactive dog to get relief when he or she gets too stressed.  The fear dog learns to trust people again when their people read their body language and help them decrease their fear at the times they are most stressed.  Once the fear dog trusts people, he or she can learn not to be less reactive to his or her environment.  I was able to significantly reduce our Malinois fear and anxiety using this new philosophy.  Over time, he has become comfortable with all of the things that once caused him fear and anxiety.

Training is my passion.  I train dogs and their people in obedience and behavior modification.  I also specialize in helping fearful dogs.  When they show aggression or reactivity to people or dogs, are reactive to things they encounter like bicycles or cars, or retreat from human contact all together, I can help.  There is nothing more rewarding to me than helping the dogs that don’t seem to be able to be helped.

~Rob