Beau is a social, happy goldendoodle from Lexington, KY. He was struggling with good manners at the door, which is a very common problem with doodles. Having a dog who loves strangers is a fantastic thing to have, but it can lead to issues with jumping and hyperactiveness. Beau also pulled badly on walks, wouldn’t come when called, and had issues with seperation anxiety.
The first step with Beau was to teach him a solid system of communication. Dogs can’t understand that a behavior is undesirable unless we have a way to communicate that to them. Beau has great food drive, so it was easy to build new behaviors with him, and introduce him to a fair system of corrections. He was conditioned to a marker system to help give him feedback with training. We also introduced him to a slip lead, and a quality remote collar from E-collar Technologies.
The e-collar makes communication a breeze with a dog who has had the right kind of conditioning. After being conditioned, we can move onto off leash reliability, and reliability around distractions. Once Beau made it through three weeks of training, including a trip to the FMBB Selection Trial in Tennessee, it was time for him to graduate. We did a few lessons with his owners to make sure that his training transferred back to his home environment.
On follow-up on Beau the other day, his owner had this to say: “Things are going good! We haven’t really had any problems. It’s funny anytime we go out on walks, you can tell he’s in the zone!”
We love updates like these, and this is several weeks after Beau graduated. People often ask if training will stay the same once the dog returns home, and the answer is yes! Our training program is designed to make sure that we are the last trainer you ever have to use.
