ARTICLESOur Dog Blog

After working on training a solid down in the August play groups, settle is a nice behavior to follow up with. The goal of teaching “settle” is to cue a sequence of behaviors – you say “settle” and your dog goes to their bed, lays down, and relaxes. A relaxed dog, one who isn’t actively...

At Doggy Business this month, we’re going to be working on the basic skill of teaching the dogs to lay down on cue. For some of the play group dogs this is a new skill, and for them we’ll teach this just as we would in our Basic Manners or Puppy Kindergarten classes. We start...

Many dogs and puppies really like to chew on and unpack puzzle toys, and providing them with a “legal” outlet for such activities – like Kongs, treat balls, and enrichment toys and games – can be a great way to satisfy that need. Sure, having objects that are okay to chew on can save you...

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...