FAQ

True behavior change, as opposed to the suppression of behavior due to the use of painful tools, can take time. The amount of time for a noticeable change in behavior will change depending on a number of factors including how long your dog has been rehearsing the behavior, how much you can change your environment to prevent rehearsals of the undesired behavior, how often you can practice the training exercises, how consistent the methods are between members of the family, and your dog’s age, breed, and medical history. Typically, if we are not seeing at least some progress in 2-3 months, we will need to change our approach. We recommend keeping a training journal so you can see in your own words just how far you have progressed.

How often you should practice depends on your training goals. Generally, it is most motivating to the dog to keep your sessions short, between 1-5 minutes long. These short sessions should take place 1-5 times per day, 3-5 times per week. For desensitization and counter-conditioning, sessions will last a little longer, usually 15-20 minutes. These sessions should take place once a day, 1-3 times per week.

The dog park can be an unpredictable place. Entry to the dog park is not always regulated, and many owners prefer to bring their dogs to the park rather than walk them because they want their dogs to get exercise while they focus on their phones. If you want to bring your dog back to the park after an incident, we recommend staying on leash, outside the fence, where your dog can enjoy the enrichment of observing other dogs safely. From here, you can practice reinforcing recall and other behaviors that are helpful for navigating the wild world of dog parks. Many dogs, however, do not enjoy the rough and rowdy play styles seen at the dog park and would much prefer to spend time with people. Through private training, you can learn to decode your dog’s body language and advocate for them in a number of challenging social situations.

To understand when your dog will stop biting you, we first need to understand the underlying cause for why the biting is happening. Is your dog play biting, struggling with being handled, or simply overstimulated? An evaluation of your dog will help determine what led up to the bite, how the events after the bite influence future incidents, and what we can do about the biting. Through gentle handling, pattern games, and arousal breaks, we can start to see a decrease in biting in a short amount of time. Progress is not linear, and the reliability of new behavior depends on a variety of factors. Keeping a training journal can help you track your progress.

How long will you need to buy groceries to feed yourself? Food functions as a paycheck for everyone who eats. Whether or not you choose to use treats to reinforce your dog’s behavior, your dog will always need to eat. Your vet will probably recommend that 10% of your dog’s daily diet come from treats and other goodies. These higher value treats are used when learning new behaviors to get fast and easy cooperation from your dog. Treats are used in abundance at first during acquisition so that we may use them sparsely to reinforce tried and true behaviors in the future. A great way to fade out treats and begin working with kibble is to crumble up your dog’s treats into tiny pieces and mix them in with their daily allotment of kibble.

The clicker works wonders for shaping new behaviors, confidence building exercises, regulating arousal levels, and catching moments that happen so quick you can’t say “good boy.” After acquisition of a new behavior, or in a situation with few distractions, a verbal marker will work just fine. If you would like to start conditioning a verbal marker right away, you can speed your training plan along by catching your dog doing something right, even when you aren’t holding your clicker. The clicker will remain a helpful power tool for your dog’s training exercises as long as you care to use it.

Training, also known as learning or conditioning, happens all the time, whether you want it to or not. Plan to help your dog learn their new home is safe by setting your environment up for success and rewarding your dog for nice behaviors, such as exploration or relaxation. To teach operant behaviors, such as “sit” or “stay,” you will first want to make sure your new dog feels comfortable in their learning environment and has the desire to work for the reward you are presenting. Your new dog may take some weeks to months to get comfortable, so we recommend easy classical conditioning and free shaping exercises during this time.

Each private lesson starts at one hour, and you can add extra time if you wish to continue getting answers to your dog training questions.

How long you should wait in between each private dog training lesson will depend on a number of factors including your training goals, your dog’s current behaviors, your dog’s age and breed, your availability, and your budget. Typically, pet parents see better results when starting with a weekly private lesson before gradually tapering off the frequency of appointments. Although you may fall into a rhythm of one appointment every two months, you will have a daily commitment to changing your habits in order to change your dog’s behavior. One-on-one dog training sessions where your trainer works directly with your dog can help your dog stay fresh on training exercises despite your busy schedule.

Congratulations on following your heart and dedicating yourself to animal welfare. There are a lot of factors that go into becoming a great trainer. To get started, you will want to surround yourself with other animal lovers who share the same vision of helping dogs live their best lives. These people can be found in shelters, dog parks, pet stores, dog daycares, grooming salons, and even online. Many dog people you will meet, however, hold an antiquated view of the world that was passed down to them from previous generations who held onto their pain and neglected to heal themselves before attempting to nurture others. Before following just anyone’s advice, ask yourself how the advice makes you feel. Do their words and actions align with your goals for improving animal welfare, or do they make you feel uncomfortable? A great trainer knows when to reevaluate their opinion based on new information and when to hold steady in their beliefs. Private coaching can help you process your thoughts on the confusing and unregulated world of dog training. Get in touch for more information.

Training services start as low as $20 to audit a class. An Evaluation, which is required before continuing with a service plan, is $75. Prices for services, including the Build Your Own Bundle, can be found on the price sheet. The type and number of sessions will depend on your behavior goals, budget, and schedule. Contact your trainer for more information.

Your Evaluation is our opportunity to gather more information on your dog(s) before moving forward with the training. This is also a good time for you to interview the trainer to make sure we will be a good fit. We usually have time for 1-3 exercises during the Evaluation. During your Private Lesson, we skip introductions and dive into more advanced training techniques.

How many sessions you will need depends on your training goals, lifestyle, past learning, and level of commitment to the training program. For most pet parents wishing to achieve significant behavior modification, at least 4 sessions are recommended after the initial Evaluation. We recommend reinforcing training concepts learned during Private Lessons with frequent One-on-One sessions.

In-home training can be more effective than a board and train for a number of reasons. We can set up your environment for success to prevent rehearsals of an undesired behavior, making behavior modification easier, faster, and longer lasting. Instead of feeling guilty for letting someone put an e-collar on your dog for two weeks, you get a say in what rewards, methods, and cues are used to get desired behavior from your dog. With in-home training, you also learn how to build new behavior from the ground up, a skill that transfers to training new behaviors and new dogs without the help of a trainer.

Better Way Dogs uses a variety of methods to achieve behavior modification and happy cohabitation between humans and dogs. We follow the humane hierarchy of dog training, always starting by making sure your dog is healthy enough for training and your environment is set up for success. Next, we identify behavior goals and use positive reinforcement techniques such as free shaping, targeting, and the lure and reward method to achieve new behaviors. We never use physical punishment to discourage a behavior, as per the advisory of numerous veterinary and academic organizations, because we know that physical punishment merely suppresses behavior and does not enact long-lasting change. Whatever methods we choose to train your dog, you can rest assured that you will have a voice in what behavior modification methods are used on your dog.

More than one dog? No problem! Whether you have one dog or a whole rescue, your hourly rate does not change. For better results, we advise working with dogs separately before attempting to work as a group.

We do not currently offer board and trains. Aside from being a huge investment, board and trains can be ineffective for enacting long-lasting behavior modification. Often, board and trains have two to four weeks to change a dog’s behavior, and to get quick results they use physical punishment to suppress behavior. At the end of the two to four weeks, your dog may not be performing the problem behavior anymore, but over time these new habits can begin to deteriorate. Your dog has not been taught how to behave politely with you, or in your home, or without the use of physical punishment. With in-home training, you address the underlying emotions that motivate a behavior and learn how to teach your dog the benefits of being polite. Why waste your money on a board and train when you could see long-lasting results for a fraction of the cost?

We do not use shock or prong collars because while they may seem initially effective, the risk of behavioral fallout and deteriorating results are too high to justify their use. Physical punishment may be convenient for some, but at what cost? The AVSAB, ASPCA, and many other veterinary and academic organizations recommend against the use of physical punishment when attempting behavior modification. While painful collars may work for quick results, positive reinforcement trainers know that recommending physical punishment for behavior modification would be like a doctor recommending smoking cigarettes for weight loss. Shock and prong collars just have too many side effects, and it’s not the fifties anymore.

The rewards you can use to pay your dog for desired behavior will depend on what your dog likes. Rewards may include play, toys, touch, attention, running, forward movement, access to smells or novel items, greeting novel people or dogs, or a chance to perform any other satisfying behavior. In order for a reward to be a positive reinforcer, it will need to be a reward your dog cares to obtain in a particular context. Your dog may enjoy the reward of fetching a ball in the morning but may prefer a massage in the afternoon. If you offer your dog a reward for a desired behavior but do not see the behavior increasing in frequency, you may need to select a different reward on your dog’s reward hierarchy to encourage behavior change.

A reward hierarchy is a list of all rewards a particular animal will work for in every context thus far observed. The items on a reward hierarchy may change in position depending on the context. For example, your dog may love beef liver treats when training at home, but they may prefer a thrown ball when training in the backyard. You know your dog best, so we will be counting on you to assess your dog’s preferred payment method. The challenge level of each training exercise will determine the value of reward used as a reinforcer. For speedy results, we recommend using a variety of rewards.