by Kate LaSala | May 5, 2025 | Dog Training, Dog Training Regulation, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Puppy Training, Rescue Dogs
I’ve previously written about 5 Myths About Shock Collars and have my free download 3 Reasons Not To Use A Shock Collar where I talk more about why not to use these tools, take a deeper dive into regulation and give you citations to research if...
by Kate LaSala | Apr 28, 2025 | Dog Training, Puppy Training
“I don’t want to bribe my dog with food” or “When can I stop using food?” are two common things I hear from clients. For some reason, a lot of people see using food in training as some form of corruption, like if they use food the...
by Kate LaSala | Apr 14, 2025 | Dog Training, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity
There are few joys better than watching a dog enjoy a car ride, with their head poking out of the window (while they’re safely tethered), watching the world go by. But for some dogs, they seem to hate car rides, showing signs of clear anxiety like...
by Kate LaSala | Apr 7, 2025 | Dog Training, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs
In the days leading up to saying goodbye to BooBoo, a sweet friend who lives far away asked what I needed and I half joked “more tissues.” About an hour later, DoorDash arrived to deliver 15 boxes of tissues, seen in the picture above. It made me...
by Kate LaSala | Mar 31, 2025 | Dog Training, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Rescue Dogs
As someone who focuses on fear and aggression, a majority of my clients have fear of strangers, or “stranger danger.” This includes subsets of strangers, like fear of children, fear of men or fear of people who look or act a certain way. When your...
by Kate LaSala | Mar 24, 2025 | Dog Training, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Puppy Training
Socialization is critical to a happy, behaviorally healthy dogs. Unfortunately there are a lot of mistruths, myths and bad information out there on socialization, including that puppies shouldn’t go out until they’re fully vaccinated. Socialization is not...
by Kate LaSala | Mar 10, 2025 | Dog Training, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs
As you may know, my husband and I recently adopted Gertie, a little over 10 months after saying goodbye to my heart and soul dog, BooBoo. I’ve been chronicling my grief journey over the last year and thought it might be helpful, on this 11 month...
by Kate LaSala | Mar 3, 2025 | Dog Training, Dogs and Babies and Kids, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Resource Guarding, Separation Anxiety
Behavioral euthanasia is touchy topic and one that tends to bring out keyboard warriors. Euthanasia for any reason is a difficult decision but behavioral euthanasia is often not given the same understanding as a euthanasia for physical reasons like cancer or...
by Kate LaSala | Feb 24, 2025 | Dog Training, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Resource Guarding
We recently adopted a new dog, Gertie, aka Gertrude Wigglebottom, a little over ten months after we said goodbye to our precious BooBoo. Surprisingly, adopting a new dog dredged up lots of grief feelings about Boo, which I’ll talk about another time. I wanted to...
by Kate LaSala | Feb 10, 2025 | Dog Training, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs
Ten months ago I said goodbye to my sweet BooBoo. It boggles my mind how it’s been that long when some days it feels like it’s just a few weeks ago. Thank you to those who keep reading. My hope is that I continue to share my grief journey so others...
