The DEV Dog Blog

There are sooooo many cool tricks, commands, sports, and more to train your dog, but before you get into any of that, we always recommend teaching what we in dog trainer land call Markers. 

Markers are short sounds that we use to give our dogs feedback on their decisions and behaviors. 

We call our Marker system: The Communication! Partially because we wanted to get a little fancy and fun with it! Partially because we feel that it is a better way to express the purpose of using these sounds. Once the pup and the human understand them well, we can use them to effectively “have a conversation” with our pupper to guide them in the right direction. That way instead of having to use commands all the time to keep our pups safe and to mind their manners, we can instead just tell them “Hey, that’s great, do that more often” or “Nope, don’t do that”. We can create strong boundaries, which ultimately allows more freedom since our dogs know what they can do and what they can’t. 

The Communicat...

 Short answer = right away! 

Every moment that you are with your dog, you are training your dog. So! It is important that once you get done reading this article you start to make changes to improve your and your dog’s life. Regardless of whether you have a brand new puppy, a bouncy adolescent who can’t seem to keep themselves together, or a dog with behavioral issues, now is the time to start training! 

Your dog’s age and maturity level is a huge factor in your training focus: 

With young puppies, especially under 4 months, it’s important to keep training super easy and fun. Starting marker training (particularly teaching Yes), name recognition games, crate games, engagement games, recall, and simply experiencing the world are super important. Keep your play and training sessions short. Like 5-10 minutes short. You’ll also want to make sure your puppy is getting plenty of quality rest in between your sessions! Puppies need up to 20 hours of sleep every day! Cranky puppies are no fun...

Holiday events are our dog Bear’s worst nightmare.

Extra people in his space, too much commotion, new smells, and wayyy too much energy. He will never be the type of dog who wants to be the center of attention. If he were a human, he would be the last to arrive, first to leave, and most likely to find a quiet corner with a close friend. That is if he showed up at all. We’re working on getting him comfy with little bits of chaos, but for him, it is a very slow process. In the meantime, we have plenty of ways we can set him up for success so he doesn’t flip his lid. If your pup is like Bear, then following this advice is for you! 

First off, don’t feel bad if your dog is anti-social or afraid of people they don’t know.

Plenty of dogs feel that way! We don’t need to force our dogs to be something they are not. Instead, take stock of where they are now and work within their comfort level. There are many phases to the this process, so take it one step at a time! 

Phase 1 = “Prevent an...

Short answer is yes, but the road to easing a dog’s anxiety is different for each case. 

I am far too familiar with helping anxious dogs, not only from working with our client pups, but mostly because my first dog was an anxious wreck. His name was Riley. Riley was a super mutt who looked mostly like a hyena. He was slender, dark brindle, and had these adorable tufts of fur that stuck out at the base of his upturned ears. He was my first dog and one of the greatest loves of my life, but boy did he make my life hell for a while. Until Riley was 10 and Corey waltzed into my life. I was blown away by the difference in Riley’s behavior after implementing the strategies Corey taught me. Keep in mind too, this was about 8 years ago and we have learned even more since then! So let’s dive in! 

Identifying Anxiety in Dogs 

Different dogs will express their anxiety in different ways. Riley was an extrovert, so his signs were very loud. He barked, marked, and destroyed things. He would pace...