FAQs

DO YOU DEAL WITH ALL BREEDS?

Yes, we can help you no matter what your dog's breed. While different breeds certainly have their predominant traits and idiosyncrasies, we must remember that all dog breeds still have the same underlying basic instincts and drives. Due to this underlying similarity in all breeds, they all respond to verbal and physical praise, kinesthetic direction and correction of inappropriate behavior. All dogs are driven to associate with you and your family as "pack" members; thus developing a clear and proper relationship with them is just as effective whether you are living with a toy poodle or an English mastiff.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE WITH YOUR PROGRAM BEFORE WE WILL START TO SEE NOTICEABLE CHANGE IN OUR DOG'S BEHAVIOR?

Most of our clients begin commenting around the second week that they have noticed a change in the demeanor of their dog. Of course, the time at which results are achieved and noticed is always dependant on the issues being dealt with and the consistency and commitment of the client in doing their homework. If the issue is something as simple as jumping, often that is resolved during the first lesson.

WHO DOES THE ACTUAL TRAINING OF OUR DOG?

We may handle your dog on occasion to demonstrate techniques; however, our goal is to have you handle your dog 100% of the time. This is a crucial cornerstone to the success of our program. Dogs know when they are working with a leader or a follower. Our goal is to train you to be a good leader for your dog and to teach you techniques to communicate clearly, fairly and precisely, so your dog will see you as their clear leader and understand what it is you are asking them to do. In most cases, it is of little relevance if your dog sees us as a leader because we don't have to live with your dog - you do. Further, if you become a competent "handler" and "leader" for your dog then you have the bedrock of a proper, long-term relationship with your pet.

IF OUR DOG IS REALLY GOOD IN THE HOUSE AND HE ONLY ACTS UP OUTSIDE, DO WE REALLY NEED MORE OBEDIENCE TRAINING?

This question really goes to the heart of the generic term obedience. Obedience, for dogs (or people) isn’t doing something when you have nothing to distract you, when have nothing better to do or when you really wanted to do it in the first place anyway – it’s doing something because it is your duty (even if you don’t feel like it). Many clients have told us that it is most important to them that their dog is obedient in precisely those situations where there are distractions. I doubt that anyone really cares if his or her dog can hold a sit-stay for 60 seconds in the middle of the living room when there’s no one around. It’s precisely the distracting environment that requires solid obedience and that’s what we’re working for in our program. If your dog can function well in distracting environments then your stress level goes down dramatically. Consequently, your dog can go more places and do more things with you and you will enjoy having them around again. So, yes, if you have trouble with obedience when your dog has more interesting things to keep him occupied, then I would suggest doing more training that aims to give you long-term results in your relationship with your dog.

I HAVE HEARD FROM PEOPLE THAT TRAINING WITH A LEASH AND CHAIN COLLAR IS INHUMANE AND UNNECESSARY. IS THIS TRUE?

The reality is that correct leash and collar training is not inhumane at all. I've never seen a dog hurt and I've seen hundreds helped by our method of training. There have been many controversial statements made recently about more traditional dog training methods. The alternative to training with a leash and chain collar is food-based training. We have found that food-based training has variable effectiveness and has several problems that we have outlined in the "Training Philosophy" section of this website.

As for leash and collar training being unnecessary, we have many clients that have tried several food-based training programs to solve the problems that they had been having with their dog. They seem to be happy and somewhat surprised at how effective our training methods are once they start the program. None of them have indicated that they feel that they were inhumane or cruel to their dogs at any point in our training program.