FeistyFido

Meet Petey. He will soon be up for adoption with Sit With Me Rescue. He is an amazing dog, super chill, loves other dogs (but NOT cats), playful in short bursts, and walks well on leash. He is 3 years old and is American Bulldog and hound mix. I was called out to do some training with him as he occasionally has some issues meeting new people especially men. We are working on walking on a Halti to control his jumping and I will continue working with him on how to greet people more appropriately. He is a very loyal dog with his foster home and was very happy to meet me in his apartment.

This handsome devil is Storm, a Sit With Me alumni. He’s a year and half and having some issues being too crazy when he plays in the backyard. Today we worked on putting play under control. First, his owners are the ones who will choose the toy they play with. Second, when teaching fetch, the give command needed to be taught by using treats as a reward. Third, they are improving his listening skills by having him do between 1 & 4 basic commands (making sure to say each c...ommand only once) before throwing the toy. Forth, using a Go command to signal when he is to fetch the toy. Huge improvements after only an hour today. Way to go Storm!!!

This is Nika, the dog. She is a 10 month old puppy. I love this picture because both Nika and grandma look so happy. This however, was not the case 4 short weeks ago. Soon after Nika was adopted she started to show fear aggression towards anyone who came into her new home. She would bark, lunge and sometimes chase or back away in fear of new people. I was called in to help this family as they were 98% sure the issues were too severe to be fixed and they were heartbroken that they might have to give her back to the rescue. What you can’t see in this picture is that there are actually 5 new people in the house. After working with this family for the past 4 weeks, Nika is gaining her confidence back, enjoying new people and settling in to her forever home.

Trained this handsome boy today. Holt learned how to greet people nicely at the door, puppy push-ups, how to crawl, Sit pretty and to touch. Smart boy.

Currently working with a 9 year old Maltese who likes to bite people as they are walking away (ankles and bums). While he has no teeth left and the bites don't hurt very much, it is a major issue. Many people ask me "How old is too old to train a dog?" I always say, it's never too late to learn! My very first dog was a 10 year old stray Rottweiler with cancer. While he only lived 6 months after I adopted him, in that time I trained him to be a certified therapy dog. He loved socializing and wanted nothing more than to please me. There is so much that we can learn from our pets, and the moral of the story is, keep learning, keep teaching, and keep striving to be the best version of yourself.