P.U.P.S Dog
Obedience Training
Karen Decker
PupsMD@aol.com
410-992-8410
P.U.P.S Dog Obedience Training is a progressive nine-week course
with a focus on achieving three goals.* All three goals are equally
important and we actually use the obedience goal as our vehicle to
achieving the other two goals. The three goals are as follows:
Obedience - the obedience goal is very progressive. By the end
of the nine week course, if you have a breed that is conducive and you
have done your work, your dog should be working on off-leash
instruction on a piece of light line which is the next step to
off-leash reliability under major distractions. I do NOT do
food/cookie training. It is all mental work on the dog’s behalf; the
reward of which is to feel useful, have a job, work as a team member
with their owner and receive praise. All of the group classes are
outside and have been for 12 years. I refuse to work inside in a
sterile, controlled building. I want the dogs outside working around
real-life distractions such as wind and birds and smells and people
and other dogs. If we can embed reliability under that environment, we
can get it anywhere. Therefore, the dog will be included on far more
outings with the family. Also, the owner learns a whole lot more about
their particular dog and their dog’s learning process needs under that
stimulating environment. I have to stress that even though everyone is
getting the same obedience progression, more importantly, each person
there is also receiving their own individual behavior modification
program based on their particular breed or breeds if it's a mix, and
the breed traits that go along with that dog. Breed traits dictate a
huge amount of your dog’s behavior, therefore, I am a firm believer
that you cannot blanket train all dogs and each owner is entitled to
education on their particular dog’s learning process needs and their
particular dogs’ mind-set. And the dog is entitled to his owner
understanding these things about him. What makes a Rottweiler tick and
what makes a Lab tick are two very different things. When a Rotti
looks at a soccer game for instance, he sees a very different picture
than a Lab who looks at the same soccer game. A good Rotti is social
and comfortable but is going to pay closer attention to the man umpire
whose yelling or the bike rider wearing a hood and sunglasses because
a Rotti is a guardian breed with prey drive and defense drive and is
bred to assess threat where a Lab who does not possess that type of
defense drive sees the kids and the balls and the birds and is certain
all those things are there just to see him!
The second goal we look for to be intact by the end of the nine
weeks is relationship establishment. We want to respectfully
and productively, and I stress those two terms, respectfully and
productively, through specialized obedience training, establish the
owner as alpha. (There is nothing more sad than to see a dog slinking
about doing what his owner asks out of fear, we want their heads held
high and their pride apparent.) Not only will this relationship make
the owner’s job a lot easier for the next decade or so, but it is also
very relieving to the dog. Whenever you have a working breed who is
put together at all genetically correct, they have a high work ethic
and with that high work ethic naturally comes dominance and that’s
okay because they need their dominance to do the jobs they were bred
to do effectively and successfully. How that dominance manifests
itself can be quite different from breed to breed, whether it is the
Lab that barrels out the door first to the kids and lovingly knocks
into them, or the herding dog who constantly moves you where they want
you to go, or a male Rotti who grumbles and tries to bully his owner
with displays of aggression. Once the dog understands through mutual
respect and trust that he can trust in his owners’ ability to make
decisions, this relieves him of the stress and responsibility of
feeling that he has to make decisions not only for himself, but for
his human pack members as well. We want to relieve him of that stress
and responsibility. This is important for all breeds, but to
illustrate this point let me use the guardian breed as an example. My
Rotti mix was a grizzly bear at the front door when someone came, and
that was okay because that’s what he was genetically engineered to do,
but when I walked down the hall and saw who it was and said HEY -
ENOUGH, that was the end of it. He trusted in my ability to make
decisions as to who entered our home. Therefore, I had a nice
guardian/companion dog as opposed to having a liability. Establishing
the owner as alpha is very relieving to your dog. You also give your
dog a language base through training while establishing this
productive, respectful relationship which then makes it easy for you
to troubleshoot behaviors at home and easier for your dog to
understand what you want from him outside of obedience. Therefore, you
set him up to succeed within your family.
The third goal I look for to be intact by the end of the
nine-week course is what I refer to as temperament, more
specifically confidence. Because the training is done is such a
way that the dog is succeeding every step of the way, we are
instilling tons and tons of confidence in the dog. The more confident
a dog is, the more capable he is of appropriately assessing
stimulating situations and the more capable he is of focusing under
that scenario. We actually teach the dog how to regulate his
adrenaline under stimulating situations so that he can focus, think
clearly, make good decisions and be tractable. When you take that dose
of confidence and couple it with desensitization to distractions and
stimuli through group training, you have a dog who can think clearly,
whose adrenaline doesn’t surge as high in stimulating situations and a
dog who can transition as easily as his breed traits will allow him,
from situation to situation. This not only teaches the dog how to
regulate his adrenaline but it increases his threshold of tolerance
regarding changes in the environment (stimuli and distractions). As
opposed to the dog who goes to the soccer game and his adrenalin
surges the entire time and he acts like a crazed maniac, therefore, he
doesn’t enjoy it nor does his owner and trust me, nor do the people
around you trying to watch the game! The goal of the program is to
have a dog you can take anywhere, anytime, therefore, the dog is
included on far more family outings. The high-confidence/low stress or
adrenaline goal is also highly effective for reforming fear biting
dogs and fear aggression dogs whether it is directed at humans or
other dogs. A fear aggression dog is a dog with low confidence and
high defense drive (many of our German Shepherds, Rottis, Australian
Shepherds, Border Collies and many other breeds suffer from this
genetic low confidence). He’s kind of like the lunch room bully. He
barks and growls with his hair up fiercely, trying to convince the dog
or person to be scared of him when really he is scared of them.
Whether the fear aggression is due to genetics or environment or both,
the confidence he gains through training allows him to make more
appropriate assessments and not see “an Indian behind every tree”, so
to speak. This boost in confidence allows the dog to feel better about
himself and the world. I believe in “healing the cut” as opposed to
"putting a band-aid" on it by just trying to hinder the aggressive
behavior. It is much better for the dog if he truly does not view the
world as a threatening place. If you own a young defense driven
guardian breed, training before they reach maturity is a great way to
prevent ending up with a fear biter. Again, we want our guardian
breeds to be good guardian/companion dogs, not liabilities.
Those are the three goals of the program. Because of these goals and
the fact that each dog is individually assessed based on their
genetics, emotional sensitivity, adrenaline system and past
environmental history, the program is more a behavior modification
program achieved through the use of obedience training, with reliable
obedience being achieved as well. I look to have all three of the
goals achieved to the highest potential by the end of the nine weeks.
The end result is a happy, confident, reliable dog and a happy,
responsible, educated owner.
* P.U.P.S. Dog Obedience Training's course is beneficial to all
dogs dog behavior "issues" including anxiety,
low-confidence though genetics or abuse, and all types of aggression.
The cost of the nine week program is $200 ($175.00 for rescue or
shelter dogs) with guaranteed results (if you have two dogs, the
second dog is half price). In other words, if all three of the goals
of the program are not to the highest potential by the end of the nine
weeks because you could not get your work in, etc., I will be the
first one to ask you to come back through for free until all those
goals are to the highest potential. (Your dog is a potential walking
advertisement for me.)
Karen Decker
P.U.P.S Dog Obedience Training
410-992-8410, email PupsMD@aol.com
Classes:
All Sunday classes are located in Clarksville, MD.
If you are interested in classes, please call or email me and I
will send you the schedule. From there let me know which dates
you prefer and I will put you on the roster. You are under no
obligation until you actually start, but putting you on the roster
will hold you a spot. I take approximately 10 dogs in a class. Should
you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email at
PupsMD@aol.com or by phone
at 410-992-8410.
Also, should you need to miss a class or so during the nine week
course, I do make-ups. Thank you.
Karen Decker
P.U.P.S Dog Obedience Training
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