Private lesson in your home

Imagine if you could have a professional dog trainer personally teach you how to remedy dog training and behavior issues with your dog … in your real-world situations. Well, now you can.

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Who is the Basic On-Leash Program for?

The Basic On-Leash Program is for people with dogs that are 7 months or older.  This program is for dogs that are exhibiting all the normal behavioral and obedience issues of the typical family dog (butnot for dogs dealing with aggression issues – there is a separate program for that) .

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The Basic On-Leash Program focuses on teaching you to train your dog in functional obedience. The ultimate result of that is long term, permanent solutions. The aim of this program is that you don’t need to go to training classes for years. We teach you the underlying principles for “why” we’re asking What Clients are saying Sean is an amazing trainer. I had been to five other trainers. Odie was still jumping, getting overly excited … not listening and mouthing me hard! I didn’t like it. Odie is a  you to do, or not do, certain things, so you have more confidence and understanding in your new training ability.

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Do you train with food treats?

As a rule, we don’t use food as a primary training tool for dogs over 7 months old.  I was originally trained in food-based, clicker training and operant conditioning.  However, I found over the years that relying solely on food treats wasn’t very functional for most dogs in real-life situations.

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In other words, food centered training worked (sometimes) as long as a dog was really hungry, or as long as there wasn’t anything else around that was more important than the food treat. I found that tapping into a social, leadership relationship with a dog is a more functional way to create long termchange in real life.

My training method has a little more of a naturalistic bias to it. I look to how dogs interact with other dogs for the core of the training. The way I often describe this to clients is, “if your dog ran up into the hills and found a real pack of dogs to live with, they wouldn’t train your dog into the rules of their pack by flipping him food treats – they would instead interact with him socially.”

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How many lessons is it? 

The Basic On-Leash Program is 7 private lessons, at your location. The lessons take place over about 5weeks.  Every ‘in person’ client in the Basic On-Leash Program gets a copy of The Dog’s Way DVD Training Course (over 10 hours of video lessons) as a reference tool, so you can watch and re-watch any lesson, at your convenience, to solidify your learning.

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In each private lesson, you’ll get specific homework assignments to do with your dog.  You’ll also learn Buddy is amazing now!! We thought there was something wrong with him? We were actually told he wasn’t very smart by a trainer we went to class with and now he’s the best trained dog how to adjust everyday interactions with your dog to foster a better leadership relationship with them and more easily coach them in your real world situations.  Clients say that the program helps them to be very focused in the first few weeks, and the immersive experience helps them and their dogs to make the necessary shift to create long term results.

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Is the program different if your dog is younger (under 18 months) as compared to 2 or 3 years old or older?

Yes and no.  The principles remain the same but some adjustment may be necessary for younger dogs.  Dogs under eighteen months old, sometimes need a little bit of a “training wheels” type of transition to training without treats.  So, we sometimes make initial exercises easier for them

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in order to follow one of the main principles that we always follow – the “natural learning process”. The “natural learning process” is starting everything as easy as you can and then incrementally adapting to progressive challenge (as opposed to trying to take big leaps in proficiency).  The best human analogy I can give you for this process is a baby learning to walk.

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What does the program cover?

We follow a general 3 step process: first clarify the relationship, then work on core skills, and then set default rules or “policies” (rules that apply all the time without having to talk to your dog about itagain .. like jumping up on people, or jumping out of the car on their own, for example).   Specifically, we cover the following commands and skills.

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  • Walking on a loose leash
  • The sit command
  • The come command
  • The leave it command
  • Stay back ( a temporary command that doesn’t allow them to cross a boundary) Permanent boundaries ( teaching them to never run out the front door or jump out of your car again, until you call them out, without you having to say anything)
  • Sending a dog to a place or into something (like a crate or car)
  • Greeting people (at the front door or out on a walk
  • Re-socializing if needed
  • How to teach your dog to stop:
    • Jumping up on you or anyone else without you having to say anything
    • Mouthing
    • Barking (note: that this isn’t describing aggression issues it’s simply unwanted barking)
    • Counter surfing
    • Chewing on things they’re not supposed to
    • Or any other creative, annoying behavior your dog may have come up with

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How much does the Basic On-Leash Program cost?

The Basic On-Leash Program is discounted from the individual lesson cost of 125.00 per lesson Instead of being $875.00 the program price is $715.00 (this cost can be spaced into 2 or 3 payments over 6 weeks)

 

Can I take only a lesson or two?

Sometimes, I will do that. The cost is $125.00 per lesson. The reason I recommend going through the

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program is that my aim is to create long term results and often a lesson or two won’t do that.  Sometimes though, particularly if you’ve trained with me before, and you just need to brush up on something, I will do one or two lessons with you.

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What if we don’t need all 7 lessons in the program (or maybe need an extra lesson)?

It’s true that there isn’t anything magic about “7 lessons” – this is simply what the vast majority ofpeople take to get through the curriculum. It’s certainly possible to get through everything in fewer

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lessons.  If you complete everything in 6 lessons for example (or just decide that there’s an intermediate skill you don’t want to learn like boundary setting for example), then I simply give you a refund for that last lesson.  If you end up needing an extra lesson or two (sometimes this happens with families that have two or more dogs – we charge by the family not by the dog), then we just charge you the program price for extra lessons ($99.00 per lesson)

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How far out is your booking schedule right now?

Typically from March through October, my schedule is two to three weeks out. November through February the schedule is one to two weeks out and we are closed for 3 weeks in December). I always like to let people know about this up front because frequently people will call and ask to start “tomorrow” … I apologize in advance for the inconvenience but I am usually not available on the schedule immediately.