Our training philosophy is primarily rewards based and focuses on positive reinforcement methods. We follow a LIMA mentality and the Humane Hierarchy in our training practices.
We believe that training a dog is all about the human and the dog building a bond through making a connection with open communication. This can be achieved through positive reinforcement and rewards based training methods that help to bring you and your dog closer together.
The stronger the bond between you and your dog, the easier training them will be. That bond helps them to want to work with you and excel at tasks to make you happy!
A great way to foster that bond is through Rewards based, Positive Reinforcement Training. Those positive reward moments are special for the bond between you and your pup. The more you increase that bond, the closer you feel to your dog, and it increases both yours and your pup’s drive to be the best selves for each other.
Adding to your bond by making a connection with your pup can up the level of your connection and create an increased ability for training and basic obedience. Making your dog happy makes you happy and your dog will want to do the same for you!
Those connections can also help to create a deep and unspoken bond between you and your pup. My husband and Brodie (our pup) have such a deep connection, that more than half the time, Dan just needs to look or barely make a hand signal for Brodie to do what Dan would like.
Open and clear communication is important to make sure that what you’re expecting of your pup is clear to them. This helps to make sure there are no misunderstanding between human and dog, allowing for less frustration!
Short Story Time!! Our philosophy of Open Communication also applies to every human in the household. A good friend of mine (a Vet-Tech of over 20 years) told me that the mis-communications between my husband and I about the dog could be what’s causing his behavior issues. That one comment completely changed how we communicated with each other, how we communicated about the dog, and how we communicated to our dog. Keeping the communication lines open in a house, making sure everyone is on the same page, and keeping consistency for the dog can change his behavior. Once we started communicating and got on the same page, many of Brodie’s “acting out moments” stopped. He listened more often AND the bond between all of us increased dramatically.
Our experiences with Brodie, as well as what I’m learning through my dog training courses have lead to my philosophy of positive reinforcement through the use of building bonds, making connections, and open communication.