One of the most common questions I get as a professional dog trainer from students with puppies is about aggression and biting. We unfortunately have even had people email us inquiring about signing up for classes to have them reply back that they rehomed the puppy before class even started because the puppy was "aggressive".

True aggression in puppies is extremely rare. I have only seen one to two cases of true aggression in a puppy under four months of age in all my years of working with dogs.

So, what are puppy owners actually seeing then?

Did you know that you could making your dog's behavior worse by saying "No"? Daily we get emails from people who say that they say "No" a thousand times a day to their dog and they just don't understand why it isn't working and why the dog's behavior is getting worse.

There are two questions I want you to ask yourself:

1. How did you train your dog to respond to the word "No"?

2. How much time do you spend on Facebook?

Mr. Webster defines the term “communication” as follows:

Communication
1. the imparting or exchanging of information or news
2. means of sending or receiving information, such as telephone lines or computers.

One could imagine from these definition that good or proper would mean that we are able to impart information quickly, throughly, and understandably to the other party with as little effort as possible.

Over the past few years, photos of amazing outdoor spaces for pet dogs and shelter dogs alike have been floating around on Pinterest and Instagram. Increasing their popularity and the number of families considering letting their yards and gardens go “to the dogs”. From these ideas and photos, the inspiration for sensory gardens for dogs was born.

Loose leash walking can be a challenging skill for many owners and dogs. There is a lot going on when trying to train your dog to walk nicely next to you. First you have to learn to hold the leash and the treats, usually while your dog is pulling you everywhere. Not to mention, your dog’s focus is elsewhere as they sniff every blade of grass and pull towards every dog and stranger they see.

Everything seems to come in waves around here!

This month we are seeing a wave of medical and psychological professionals who would like to have therapy dogs to take to work with them to assist with patients, so I wanted to make this post again for anyone who missed it last time and just to further educate on what our process looks like in this case.

I very rarely think about getting my dogs away from treats or toys during training anymore. So, sometimes when clients ask me about this, I can have some difficulty understanding why they are concerned because I know that dogs work for many things beyond treats and I can harness those things to use to my advantage.

I have a story about my luck with professionals lately and I thought it helped make a good point about searching for a dog trainer. So, settle in and read on!

Did you know that the dog training industry is unregulated?

Let me tell you about my personal experience with a (mostly) unregulated industry recently. When purchasing our new home, we had a home inspection done, just like any reasonable home buyer would do…

We have some exciting news to share with everyone; Faithfully Yours Dog Training, LLC will be moving to a beautiful, new 11-acre location in Braxton, MS, which we have named Brindlewood Farms!

We have been working hard to purchase this property and get it ready for training clients. Our expected re-opening will be in September 2018. This new location will give us the ability to grow our business even further and offer services we never could before.

One of the most exciting parts of bringing home a new puppy is figuring out what your puppy likes and doesn't like. As their personalities blossom before us, we often start seeing naughty behaviors appear as well. A good setup for your puppy cannot only prevent some of these behaviors from ever beginning, but it can be a puppy's safe haven where they learn to relax and become independent.

The American Kennel Club's Canine Good Citizenship (CGC) exam is a ten-point exam that tests whether or not your dog meets the AKC's requirements to hold the title of Canine Good Citizen. The CGC test looks at several basic obedience skills and the temperament of your dog to determine whether your dog is worthy of this title.

With two new dog parks in the area, I am asked weekly about whether or not the dog park is a good idea for socialization or exercise - my answer is almost always "no".

When at the dog park, you don't know the education level of the other owners, whether or not a dog is friendly...

Puppies. They aren't for the faint of heart. Here at Faithfully Yours Dog Training, we get calls about "puppy problems" every day and it has come to our attention that people are usually calling about the same issues. The struggles of a puppy owner are real. Puppies will destroy your clothing and carpet in no-time flat. So, what is an new puppy owner to do? Here are our solutions for the three biggest puppy training issues we get calls about.

We are happy to announce that last night we were featured in a segment on therapy dog training (not to be confused with service dog training), on WLBT and FOX40. A news reporter got to see a day-and-a-life as a dog trainer, as we trained a Labradoodle puppy named Merlin and went with Faithfully Yours graduate, Misty the Therapy Dog's owner, Gloria Thompson to volunteer at a nursing home in Madison...

Recently it has come to my attention that euthanasia for behavioral problems in dogs seems to be on the rise in my area. However, when I looked into who was making the call, I was disappointed and alarmed. It appears that trainers have taken to recommending euthanasia over the phone for dogs they haven’t seen in person – and people are following their advice.

Many of these dogs sadly could have been helped or worse, might have been displaying behaviors that were normal and were wrongly “diagnosed” over the phone.

When I started dog training many moons ago, the field was based mainly on the now-debunked dominance theory. The current principles applied to dog training were just mere whispers of what was to come. However, I think this goes to show how far dog training is behind other forms of behavior modification and learning. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen any zookeepers or marine mammal trainers apply corrections to their animal students and expect anything other than certain death. Why do we seem to think that dogs are different than any other mammal on the planet?

Our first public dog park, Dog Park at the Rez will be opening this weekend, and that means many owners inexperienced in dog park culture will be there to try out a dog park for the first time. I noticed many of my clients were becoming anxious about the grand opening and still on the fence about going to the dog park. While I am not a huge fan of dog parks myself, I think that with a community understanding of dog body language and safety, they can be enjoyable for a select group of dogs and owners. To help ease some anxiety and help everyone have a safe and fun weekend at the dog park, I give you my tips for having the best dog park experience.

With the dog training world being unregulated, labels for various types of training have gotten out of control. You can pretty much call yourself anything and define yourself however you please to sell yourself to clients. Marketing methods like this, put future dog training clients at a huge disadvantage. Dog trainers can confuse you before you even set foot in a training class. You might think you are getting one thing, but you are getting another.

My first thought about this is we have no data to even prove that statement. Someone’s opinion on what they think they have seen a handful of times isn’t enough to make it factual information.

I have had many clients not helped by both other force-free trainers and more punitive trainers. My guess as to why? The trainers both aren’t experience enough in their methods to successfully handle that case. End of story. Nothing more and nothing less.

My entire life I have only owned rescued dogs with histories of unknown circumstances and problematic issues. All of my dogs essentially came to me “broken”. They all came with a plethora of problem behaviors and were “project” dogs. After working with rescue after rescue and seeing more of the same, I decided it was time for me to step outside of my comfort zone and purchase a dog from a responsible breeder instead.