This week we will explore a very common dog training behavior that most people would like to train their dogs "leave it".  

Is your dog a trash hunter? Eats everything that they find? Reacts to dogs or people passing by? Steals your dinner from the table? Do they have to greet everyone? 

Well, then listen in how we can best communicate with our dogs to leave those things alone :)

Check us out: 

https://www.wildwoodcanine.com/

https://www.happytailsjourney.com/

Let us know what you think, we would love to answer your questions :) 

Our dog's behavior changes as they age.  This week we discuss teenage puppies or adolescent dogs between the ages of 6 months to 2 years old.  Just like human teenagers, adolescent dogs are still growing and developing and they can drive you crazy!  Join two positive reinforcement dog trainers as the discuss adolescent dog behavior and personal experiences and expertise on this subject.

You can find Melanie and Christine online at:

Happy Tails Journey

Wildwood Canine

Pattern games have become a staple in force free dog training.  Pattern games are an amazing way to help your dog navigate their way through unpredictable, over stimulating or scary environments.  It gives them a safe stable pattern to exist in while they can process the world around them. Join two positive reinforcement dog trainers as we discuss training and pattern games this week!

Leslie McDevitt - Control Unleashed - Here is a link to her books and CD's - Control Unleashed - Reactive to Relaxed

Happy Tails Journey

Wildwood Canine

The emotional state of our dogs is one of the key factors that we look at in positive reinforcement dog training.  Just like humans dogs have needs that need to be met for them to feel safe and happy in their lives.  Making sure these needs are being met are an essential foundation for any kind of training that we want to do with them.   Join Melanie and Christine in this weeks episode and hear two positive reinforcement dog trainers talk about how to keep our dog's emotional cup's full.

Info-graphic - A Dog's Emotional Cup - pinned to the top of our page.

Happy Tails Journey

Wildwood Canine

How does a force free, positive reinforcement dog trainer set up their training sessions?  Join us this week and find out!

In this episode we want to talk about different training session set ups. Join us when we work our way through the most common questions. Such as:

How long should the session be?

How many times do I need to train my dog?

How many breaks does my dog need? etc.

Please check us out:

https://www.wildwoodcanine.com/

https://www.happytailsjourney.com/ 

In dog training, teaching our dogs to greet people with four paws on the floor is one of the most requested types of training.  Force free dog trainers have plenty of strategies for getting this behavior to happen with our dogs.  In this episode we are going to talk about dog to people greetings.  Some dogs are shy and some are very enthusiastic about meeting people.  Training dogs to greet people in a way that humans feel is "polite" can be an extreme challenge and this is our topic for this week.  I hope you enjoy it!

You can find us here -

Happy Trails Journey

Wildwood Canine

Force free dog trainers work of a foundation of skills that we use when training many other things with our dogs.  If you ask a dog trainer what the 5 most important behaviors are to train a dog what do they say?  In this episode we talk about our top 5 most important foundation behaviors.  These behaviors are the groundwork for everything else that we train.  Join two positive reinforcement dog trainers as we discuss five behaviors that we train every dog.

Want to know more about us?

You can find us here:

Happy Tails Journey

Wildwood Canine

Management is always the first step in any positive reinforcement dog training plan. In this episode we will talk about how management can give you an immediate relieve from some common dog behaviors. Just to name a few: jumping on us, grabbing/shaking our clothes, pulling on the leash or stealing from the kitchen counter.

We will talk about why management is the first go-to for dog trainers and why some clients choose to stick with management rather than training an alternative behavior with their dogs.  Preventing our dogs from practicing the behaviors we want to change is a starting point for any dog training plan.  Join two positive reinforcement dog trainers, Melanie and Christine as we discuss this topic.

Please check us out:

https://www.wildwoodcanine.com/

https://www.happytailsjourney.com/

We will talk about a controversial topic in the dog training world, labels. We will explore with you what labels are, what we think is important to know and how to or not to use labels in our communication. 

Please check out this overview from Dr. Susan Friedman :http://www.behaviorworks.org/files/worksheets/Behavior%20Toolkit.pdf

Positive reinforcement dog training relies on enrichment as a foundation tool in any sort of training that we do.  Dogs have needs and enrichment activities help our dogs to be calmer and happier and able to engage in training with us.  In this episode we talk about what enrichment is, why it's important and how to use it with your dog.  Join two positive reinforcement dog trainers as we discuss one of our favorite dog training topics!

Please check us out:

Christine: 

https://www.wildwoodcanine.com/

And her dog parkour podcast:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/353opHOGxRqbBsLZOIVeRa

And here is Melanie's:

https://www.happytailsjourney.com/

Let us know what you think in the comments, as always we are happy to hear from you :)