Recall. It could save your dog’s life someday, so practice it!

We practice inside in low distraction-environments first to make sure the dog really understands what we’re asking of them. Here, Willow is practicing recall while we’re out of sight using the e-collar to help her. We use the pressure of the e-collar essentially as a game of hot-or-cold. As she gets closer, the stimulus from the e-collar lessens. If she gets farther away, the stimulus increases. This helps her understand exactly what we expect of her, and gives her the power to turn it off by finding her target (me). We do lots of repetitions to make sure she really understands this game. Did we mention that we’re on really low levels on the e-collar here? She’s working at a level 4 out of 100! That means she’s tuned in and ready to work.

So much of puppy training is about setting up a really nice foundation. That means building confidence, teaching them how to move with you, trying new things, and exposing them to the world around us. Daisy was pretty nervous with trying new things, so we took her to a park with lots of structures to explore, lots of smells to distract her, and lots of opportunities to make mistakes and try again. We used lures and love and praise to encourage her through anything that seemed hard, and we practiced it until it wasn’t a big deal for her anymore. Believe it or not, this is training and it’s going to set her up with such a nice foundation that will last a lifetime. Who said training had to be boring?!

Willow absolutely adores other dogs. The problem with that is, not all dogs adore her. She has a lot of energy and doesn’t know how to read their signals when they’ve had enough of her, and that’s led to other dogs correcting her. We don’t want that!

So we haven’t introduced her to Copper yet in the traditional sense. It’s not because I’m worried (I think they would actually love playing together). It’s because I need Willow to change how she sees other dogs. Right now she believes that every dog should be her buddy and she gets really amped up whenever she sees another dog. That’s a dog that you can’t trust out in public. Instead, I want her to become neutral around other dogs, and only go play with them when she gets permission from me. And we practice this by lots of place time around each other. Sometimes she’ll have to watch Copper play, sometimes Copper will have to watch her play, and sometimes they’ll just hang out together like this.

This changes the conversation entirely from Willow doing whatever she wants, to Willow developing impulse control and looking to me for direction. Once she masters this mindset, her world will open up so much!

Theo is all about escaping discomfort.

If he hears a loud noise, he tries to run away. If he’s feeling needy, he pushes into your arm for attention. If he’s in the crate, he wants out. If he’s out of the crate, he wants in.

He needs to not only understand that he can’t escape everything (it’s not a safe option!), but that I will keep him safe and help him through everything that is uncomfortable. Today, that means learning to relax in the crate with the door open. No bolting out, no running, no clinging to me for comfort. Simply learning how to get comfortable and relax in this moment.

This is no easy task. It takes time and patience to really work through these struggles. How often do we personally practice accepting things that make us uncomfortable and try to grow through them? It’s much easier for me to be on this side of the camera, that’s for sure.

Patriot is helping me demonstrate how to ask for more eye contact from your dog. This is a great skill to have that can translate into so many other areas of your training. You want your dog to focus on you, so start them young if you can and teach them that giving you their attention will earn them a reward!

This is a great exercise to work on with your puppy to encourage them to focus on you and give you some eye contact. We start this in low distraction environments, make sure the dog really understands what we’re asking, and then we’ll practice this in other environments like outside, with other dogs around, with higher-value rewards, etc.

Puppy training takes patience, so I love that I captured this moment in Patriot’s training that was all about waiting for him to problem solve. In this video you’ll see a really cool learning moment in Patriot’s training. He knows place, and he knows down. So now we’re pairing them together, the end goal being that he will get on place and down automatically. So we start by telling him “Place, down, break. Place, down, break. Place, down, break.” We put in a lot of repetitions so that he would start to see the pattern. Now we’re telling him “Place” and then waiting to see if he can do the next behavior in the sequence (down). He has a tough repetition where he’s trying to figure out what to do, and then it clicks and he starts downing every time we tell him place. It’s so cool to watch these little guys problem solve!

Ren is a sweet girl that LOVES people and thinks that everyone is here for her. That gets her into the wrong mindset and leads to her jumping on people, breaking command, and pulling on the leash. We need to work through that so that she can be exposed to new environments and people, but still be respectful of their space and the rules we have in place.

Let’s talk about this incredibly simple but useful tool. Don’t have one? We’ll show you how to make one in a pinch so that you can safely leash your dog anytime, anywhere.