If you share your life with a hard dog, whether they're reactive, fearful, anxious, aging, or struggling to with strangers or your child, there's a version of your life you've quietly let go of. Maybe you stopped having people over because your dog can't handle it,...
As a trainer who specializes in fear and aggression cases, I'm regularly asked by private clients and rescue organizations about sending dogs off to a "sanctuary," and I want to be clear about how I'm using that term here. I'm referring specifically to facilities...
As a behavior consultant who specializes in fear, aggression, reactivity, and separation anxiety, my primary goal is to help families work through their dog's behavior challenges. I've helped thousands of dogs and their people navigate issues that felt...
When people think about separation anxiety, they usually picture a young dog, maybe a newly adopted rescue still decompressing, or a pandemic puppy who never learned to be alone. Separation anxiety as a senior dog problem doesn't come up nearly as often. But...
When your pet dies, you don't just lose them. You lose your routine, your identity, and your community too. These secondary losses are real.
It's that time of year again. School is out, kids want to earn a little money and community social media groups are filling with posts from parents offering their child as a dog walker. It makes me cringe honestly. So it's a great time to revisit this post. During...
One of the most common things I hear from new clients is some version of this: "My dog has separation anxiety. He freaks out every time I put him in his crate." I understand why those two things feel connected. In many homes, confinement and being left alone...
Feeling relieved after a behavioral euthanasia doesn't mean you didn't love your dog. It means you carried something heavy for a long time.
Three thousand clients. I've been eyeing that 3000 number for a while and when I updated my master client log earlier last month I sat trying to figure out how to write about it and commemorate it without it sounding like a humble brag. It's something I'm very...
Let me tell you about one of the most humbling (embarrassing?) moments of my dog training career. It involved a Halloween costume, a jack o'lantern, and Gertie making a break for it while I stood there in my front yard yelling something I thought I'd never...
We have a tendency to give puppies a pass. They're young, cute, still learning and "just being a puppy." And yes, some puppy behavior is completely normal and does settle with age, consistent training, and appropriate socialization. But some of it doesn't....
A while back I wrote about the importance of interval training in dog training. The idea of mixing higher-intensity practice with periods of rest is something I encourage all my clients to use, especially when working through separation anxiety or fear-based...