booking new clients for august and september
Positive Reinforcement Dog Training
Click with Your Dog teaches your dog the skills they need to be an enjoyable companion; in the environments they will actually need those skills. Unlike most group lessons, private lessons take place in your home, neighborhood, and the places you spend time in, so your dog will learn to use their skills in any situation.
With any training plan, you should be willling to implement structured training sessions 2-3 times a day, for a total of 30 minutes (10-15 minute sessions each). To get the most out of training, you should also be prepared to implement management strategies when they are recommended, and integrate training into your routine where it is recommended. This may mean that you need to adjust your routine to accommodate training. Training is an investment, the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.
Puppies & Adolescents
Training for puppies and adolescent dogs involves focusing on socialization, handling skills for things like grooming and vet visits, confidence building, and learning important skills including:
- Name recognition and recall
- Loose leash walking
- Sit, down, and stand
- Drop it and leave it
- Kennel training, potty training, and separation anxiety prevention
- House manners
- Polite greetings
- Positive interrupters and release words
Puppy training takes place in age appropriate locations, and safe socialization during the vaccination period will be discussed. Training for older puppies and adolescent dogs focuses on building the skills they have learned around novel distractions, like people, other dogs, and new environments.
Adult Dogs
Basic obedience training for adult dogs includes learning obedience skills and household manners including:
- Sit, down, and stand
- Stay, wait, and come when called
- Loose leash walking and heel
- Leave it and drop it
- Place
- Polite greetings
- Positive interrupters and release words
All behaviors are taught in a lower distraction environment first, and then practiced around distractions you will encounter in real life, including other people and dogs.
Behavior Modification
If you are struggling with your dogs behavior, a positive reinforcement behavior modification plan can help. Behavior modification focuses on teaching your dog new skills and changing their emotions around prior triggers using desensitization and counterconditioning as well as other techniques, including management to prevent behaviors from being rehearsed and reinforced while behavior change is taking place. Common behaviors that can benefit from a behavior modification plan include:
- Reactivity
- Excessive barking at people or sounds
- Separation anxiety
- Resource guarding
- Intra-household aggression
- Intra-household integration with behaviorally complex dogs
- Anxious and fearful behaviors
- Behaviors around veterinary care or grooming
When beginning a behavior modification plan, you may be asked to set up a vet visit to begin a pain management trial for your dog. This is because dogs exhibiting anxious or aggressive behaviors often have underlying pain that we may not be able to see from the outside.
If your dog is exhibiting a brand new aggressive behavior, or has bitten, snapped at, or nipped a person or a dog seemingly out of nowhere, a pain management trial is mandatory to begin training.