ARTICLESOur Dog Blog

We’ve worked on hand and object targeting in our Doggy Business LLC play groups a few times over the years, and thought this would be a fun skill to revisit. It’s an easy one to teach and once your dog has a solid hand target, you can use it to help them learn more complex...

Over the last few years we’ve worked on a variety of skills and behaviors in the Doggy Business LLC play groups. This month, we thought we’d let the trainers in each play group choose what they want to work on with each of the dogs. Some of the many behaviors and skill sets they have...

We thought we’d continue the fun this Spring and focus on tricks again this month. Canine sports often include behaviors that are fun tricks, such as teaching a dog to push a ball with it’s nose (Treibball), jump over a bar or through a hoop (Agility), or turn in a circle on cue (Canine Freestyle)....

This month we’re getting back to some fun stuff – Tricks! Dog tricks are fun to teach, fun to learn, and you can sneak in some great foundation skills training while you’re at it. During the play groups in March we’ll be working on a variety of dog tricks, focusing on teaching the dogs to...

Time Outs are one of the techniques we use at Doggy Business to change unwanted and problematic behaviors that happen while the dogs are playing. For us, “problematic” means a behavior used by a dog that causes conflict between him or herself and another dog. A Time Out is essentially a “Bummer” for the dog....

Capturing is waiting for our dogs to do something we like and then reinforcing it. When you are with your dog, pay attention to what she is doing. Whenever she does something you like, capture it by clicking as soon as she does it and immediately give a reward. It’s as simple as that! CAPTURING...

As promised, this month we’re continuing our discussion of play, focusing on how to use healthy play as an effective training tool. For the October Behavior of the Month, we reviewed how to recognize common characteristics of healthy play and how to use those observations to determine if an interaction is healthy and playful or...

For the next two months we’re going to discuss play – what healthy dog play looks like and how to use play as an effective training tool. Anyone who has ever had a dog knows that dogs love to play. Dogs love to run, dig holes, chase balls, play tug-a-war, fetch tennis balls, run agility...

We worked on targeting in February and July of 2013 and thought this skill would be a fun one to revisit in preparation for our Treibball Clinic coming up in the Fall (Thursday, October 2nd). In the sport of Treibball, dogs push balls with their nose across a field and into a goal. The first...

This month we’d like to get back to the basics and work on teaching Sit, Down, and Stand on a verbal cue. We work on these skills regularly in play groups, but wanted to make a special effort this month to make sure all the dogs are grounded in these basics, especially dogs that are...