One of the questions I ask potential clients is what their goals are for their dog’s training. This is important to know as the trainer because I want to know what kind of expectations my clients have for the board & train program, and I want to discuss those up front to make sure we’re on the same page. However, it’s also a good question for any dog owner to ask themselves. Just like with anything else in life, it’s helpful to have defined goals to work toward. Goals help you measure progress, stay on track, and give you a sense of accomplishment as you meet them. Here are four questions to ask yourself when setting goals for your dog’s behavior and training.

There is a lot of misunderstanding—and some disagreement—about what constitutes proper dog socialization. In this post I’ll focus on one aspect of socialization that’s typically overlooked: calm coexistence. We’ll talk about what calm coexistence is, how it’s helpful for socialization, and what it looks like.

Backups are an important safety measure. If your training collar comes off unexpectedly, the backup ensures you still have a hold of your dog. Backups connect from the prong collar to the regular collar or from the “butt” of the leash to the regular collar. Here are three backup options.

I’m not going to pretend that every single one of my personal dogs gets a walk every single day of the week, every week, all year long. That is not the case! Perfection is not the point of this post; the point is to understand the advantages of a daily structured walk, and why that’s a good goal to shoot for.

When your dog jumps on someone, do you say “down” to tell him to get off of the person? When your dog gets on a piece of furniture he’s not supposed to be on, do you say “down” to tell him to get down? And when you want your dog to lie down, do you also say “down”? If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, you are accidentally confusing your dog! We humans can understand that the word down could mean different things in different contexts, but dogs aren’t capable of figuring that out. For best results, you’ll want to be totally consistent with your words. Let’s break down the options and which words I recommend for those three contexts.