Your puppy is learning from the moment you bring him home. The first few weeks should be focused on house training, confinement training, and building trust. Puppies up to 5 months of age need positive experiences with people, places, noises, and textures, before they are fully vaccinated.

You can begin formal training at any time. We recommend working on focus and follow exercises once your puppy comes home. You have a lifetime to teach “obedience” skills.

Play biting is a normal canine behavior. Play biting is the way puppies learn bite inhibition, and it can be painful! There is a significant reduction in puppy biting by 16 weeks of age (when it is replaced by destructive chewing!)

Redirection is the best way to handle puppy biting. You can also place a barrier , such as a baby gate, between you and your puppy.

DO NOT grab your puppy’s muzzle, tongue, or pin your puppy down when play biting occurs! This makes you scary, unpredictable, and can cause irreparable damage to your relationship!

There are several reasons your dog may not listen to you. The first reason is that you don’t have his attention. If your dog isn’t focused on you it is difficult to communicate. The second is you may be asking for a behavior that your dog doesn’t really understand, or in a situation that is different from what he learned. A sit at home is very different from a sit in a public place. The third is that your dog may be having difficulty with the environment. When fear or anxiety are present, thinking can be very difficult for both dogs and people. Finally, your dog may not find your request as rewarding as he would like, or you may be inadvertently confusing or scary. That is why your relationship is SO important.

We would love to be able to guarantee your dog will always be well behaved, but behavior changes due to a variety of stimuli. There are too many variables that we do not control outside of the training sessions.

We can guarantee that you and your dog will learn together, be treated with respect, and will have the support you need to be successful. Your level of commitment and follow through is the biggest factor in your dog’s success.

We can certainly CHANGE your dog’s behavior! Any trainer who claims to correct behavior quickly is likely using force or fear to suppress behavior.

We rely on proactive management to set dogs up for success, and giving the dog choices that can be reinforced. With this formula behavior changes occur and are not reliant on specific tools.

No, you cannot “fix” aggression. Aggression is a normal part of canine behavior. We look at the underlying CAUSE(S) for a dog’s use of aggression, whether the context is appropriate, and what the level of the dog’s aggression is, before determining how to modify the dog’s behavior.

Aggression towards humans is potentially dangerous! We can help you determine why your dog is using aggression, and outline the steps needed to change it.

Correction is often synonymous with punishment. Punishment can be used to help change behavior but corrections that are scary, painful, or intimidating can have unwanted long term effects, such as fear or aggression.

A better way to think of this is “can I manage this situation differently so my dog doesn’t get into trouble?”

You can also think “what would I like my dog to do in this situation instead?” and then teach him how to be successful.

Training is a life long experience for both you and your dog. There are technically 4 phases of learning:

Acquisition - Acquiring the skills you want him to learn

Fluency - Regular occurrence of the skills on cue

Generalization - Ability to perform the skills in a variety of situations

Maintenance - Continued practice of the skills you have taught

Every dog can acquire new skills but it is up to you to help them learn to perform them regularly and in a variety of situations or around new stimuli.

Training is considered to be acquiring new skills or teaching new behaviors. This is called “consequence based” learning, or Operant Learning. Teaching a dog to sit on cue is an example of training.

Behavior modification is learning through paired association or “Classical Conditioning.” The sound of the cookie jar lid, which predicts a treat is an example of classical conditioning.

We “train” dogs to perform new skills that we think will be useful. We “modify” a dog’s behavior when they are worried or fearful, using a variety of behavior modification techniques.

Dogs that are reactive or aggressive often need to learn new skills (training) AND need to learn to to feel differently (behavior modification) about the “scary monsters” in their world.