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.

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…

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.

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...

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?

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.

Since I have been homebound lately while recovering from health issues and waiting for my medicine to kick in, I have been working with Oakley, our new Border Collie puppy, on some new training challenges. So far Oakley has already done mat work and sleeps soundly in her exercise pen with crate attached overnight.

However I rarely lock her inside of the crate itself because we haven’t gone through all the training steps I prefer yet to decrease stress and build comfort in the crate.I thought it was definitely time to start teaching her to love her crate!

Well, here we go into one of the most debated topics in the dog world. We had to go down the rabbit hole at some point. A few days ago I came across a post on my Facebook feed by an aspiring trainer, and I was disappointed to see how a blooming once-promising positive trainer was talking about how “corrections” were needed to train dogs. Their point was that “positive only” training is much too permissive, and we are leaving out a huge chunk of information a dog needs to learn – what they are doing wrong.

Thanksgiving is finally upon us. The hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving and yummy treats just for the humans is enough to drive any dog mad. It could be hours of sitting around doing nothing while their owners cook delicious food they can’t have or talk to the cat-people relatives. Our dogs being underfoot, begging for turkey isn’t exactly helpful when we’re stressed from hours in the kitchen. Many dog owners wait until last minute and then realize a week of training just isn’t long enough to solve their dog’s behavior problems. So, here at Faithfully Yours Dog Training, we started testing a few ways to keep your dog happy while you get ready for the holidays.

Last night, I had a pretty cool experience. In my brochures I was handing out about Faithfully Yours, a man read the section that said I was studying Psychology.

He asked me where I was studying and what plans I had after that. I told him I would be continuing on for my Animal Behavior degree in a year or so. He said, “WOW! They have an animal psychology degree now!?”He then told me this amazing story about his older dog he had trained to sit at intersections on their walks and wait for him to point in the direction they were going, before the dog would continue walking.

He then added, “I used my psychology degree to teach him all that stuff, come to think of it.”

As a dog trainer, I never know who is going to call next. Every client, dog, and family are different. They have different needs, wants, and goals for their dog and household. Of course, there are some common complaints I hear quite often, but most of my job is being creative and making the humans’ lives with their dogs easier. The truth of the matter is most of the “behavioral issues” I see are just dogs being dogs. The dog is perfectly fine and happy. The people, however, have expectations of the dog and are therefore, unhappy when they aren’t met.

It is that time of year again! It is puppy season! This is the time, us dog trainers, see a huge increase in clients, especially puppy clients. The weather is getting warm, the kids will be out of school, and what better idea than to get a puppy so, they can have summer adventures together, right?

Ermm… maybe not so much.

We have all heard it a million times; puppies are a huge responsibility. As adults, we should be able to handle this responsibility, right? Well, to be honest, puppies are not for the fate of heart. Puppies bite, pee, poop, whine at all hours of the night, and in general, get into trouble.

Let me just start this blog by saying, agility is my passion. Out of all the training I do with dogs, agility is my favorite. It isn’t my favorite because you can compete and win fancy ribbons. It is my favorite because the dogs love it and you build an amazing bond with your dog throughout the process. I didn’t think dog owners in Mississippi had an interest in dog agility when I first started training, so I put my passion on the back burner to focus on the needs of my clients.

My name is Lauren Parks and I have been training dogs using positive methods for 11 years. I started training dogs in Nashville, TN. Eleven years ago, trainers in Nashville were using positive methods to train dogs. Clicker training was highly recommended and you rarely saw a prong collar on a dog. Fast forward to today, I am training dogs in Mississippi.

Mississippi is known for many things. Most of those things are negative, like having obese citizens, having lax animal cruelty laws, and being the most corrupt state in the nation. We are known as being backwards and behind on the times.