Dog Obedience Training For Your Pet Dog

People call me a pragmatic dog trainer. I’m flattered actually, but in some circles it’s meant as a slur. That’s ok, because what it really comes down to with me is helping people and their dogs have a better quality of life. Notice there that I said “people AND their dogs” not just the dogs and not just the people, that is a very important distinction about how we at Fidelio approach things.

Sometimes in my profession I run across situations that just amaze and confound me. This recent story is one of those.

I’ve got a client, a new client that called me a few weeks ago desperate because she was unable to walk her dog. She’d been working with another trainer for a number of sessions, and after 5, yep that’s right five, lessons she was still unable to walk her dog across the street without it yanking her injured shoulder to the point that it hurt. That’s a very bad situation with a high energy dog. This dog needed walking and it needed walking a LOT.

Well when I met with the client we talked for a few minutes about her health issues and the history of the dog, then it was time to go to work. Straight away when we clipped the leash onto the dog and it charged out the door and yanked hard on her owner. From what the owner told me, this was how every walk had been since she adopted the dog, and it’s also how the walks were with the previous trainer. Not a pretty site for the dog or the owner.

Now, I’m all for other trainers having a philosophy about dog training. That’s fine, but here is where the ‘pragmatic’ part of what I do comes into play. If that philosophy isn’t helping the dog, the owner, or the situation, it might be the wrong philosophy and it probably is time to change it. Unfortunately some trainers don’t or can’t look at things that way.

Once I touched this dog’s leash it took me exactly 20 seconds to get the dog walking properly without pulling, lunging, forging, or cutting in front of me. Within less than a minute the dog was managing a pretty decent heel position. I was flabbergasted about how another trainer had taken 5 HOURS thus far and hundreds and hundreds of dollars of lessons and not been able to get the dog to walk across the street peacefully with the owner? I didn’t really have to do anything special with this dog and certainly nothing that a first year trainer wouldn’t be able to do in their sleep. Also, I didn’t even have to use any special equipment or training collars with the dog to get it to perform.

By the end of the session the owner was walking the dog around the park in front of her house in a heel position passing other dogs with no issues and managing to move past the pesky squirrels that always elicited a strong lunge on the leash before. Now that, is improving someone’s quality of life and I’ll take my pragmatic approach any day over wasting hours and hours of time and hundreds of dollars on a failed philosophy of training.

Now, I don’t put myself or my company forward as some Super Trainer organization or anything like that. What I do believe is that we at Fidelio have the ability, skill, and training to look at the whole situation and do what is best for the dog AND the owner and get them to a better place in their lives in a pragmatic way.

Steve Haynes
Austin dog trainer
fideliodogs.com

The way I do dog training is a driving intensive endeavor. For the past few years I’ve driven around in a large Volvo wagon that I needed for hauling client dogs here and there but that part of the business has not been that important of late so it was time for a change.

On the average day I’ll drive about 100 miles between client meetings. Yep, I’m busy, and that’s a lot of drive time. To try to mitigate how much pollution I create doing my thing it was time to change vehicles. The new official vehicle of Fidelio Dog Works is not a not very sexy but super efficient Prius. We are saving many gallons of gas a day with this thing and it just makes us feel better about out not adding as many degrees of heat to the summer here in Austin. Just think of it as our way of keeping the dog’s feet just a bit cooler on the pavement during August.

Here’s to greener dog training.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Wow! I ran across this on youtube today and sat there for the whole time just completely enthralled. Anyone that works with “field” dogs will find this great fun to watch. Particularly if you like the “English” breeds of cockers, setters, and springers. Worth the 9 minutes or so to take a look.

Here it is:

Well, It’s time for my annual post on heat stroke and your dog. This year, instead of all of my anecdotes and whatnot I’m going to post an email I received this morning from a favorite client of mine. Read this and then do what’s right and don’t run your dog in the heat of the day!

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I only send this to you because I thought you might want a sobering story to remind all of your clients about the dangers of heatstroke.

Tuesday night I was with my trail running group in the greenbelt, and near the end of the run came across some guys carrying their great dane out, on a towel.
Heatstroke. I stopped running and helped them (and two cops) carry this dog out. Maybe a miracle happened and the dog survived, but during the 15 minutes I carried one end of the towel the dog went from very quiet to eyes wide open / tongue lodged out of the side of its mouth. As a dog lover, it is mighty hard to watch a young healthy dog die in front of your eyes.

I’m not an expert, but I know the heat is a killer. Dogs can’t sweat – when in doubt keep your dog’s time in the heat as short as possible.

db

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If that won’t make you think twice about dogs and heat I don’t know what will.

Be safe and keep you pups cool.

Steve Haynes
Austin dog trainer
fidelio dog works

Had a strange meeting with a client today. Their dog who is now over a year old and who I trained initially has developed a habit that his family thinks is unsettling.

It seems that the pup spends most of the day with the mom of the house, and while she is a great lady and a very dedicated dog trainer she is a bit of a perfectionist. Well, when the dad of the house comes home the pup goes nuts and wants to spend all the time with him. This, as you can imagine with a bit of a perfect mother, was unsettling.

Their question to me was “how do we make the dog like me [the husband] less and like her [the mom] more??” Simple actually. As with many things in life, familiarity breeds contempt. I told them to switch roles for a few days and let the dad do the walking, training, grooming, feeding… and let the mom do the come home and play thing. It should be an interesting experiment.

Now, while nothing in dog training is absolutely certain, I’ll bet a heavy wager that by the end of the week the pup will be following the mom around going “play with me, play with me, play with me” at every opportunity.

Hopefully, problem/issue solved

Many days I spend my time running between clients in the car and saying “sit”, ‘Down’, ‘come’ over and over…. all day. It’s not a bad way to spend a day, in the company of dogs and their people devoted to them, but it’s nice to once and a while get to work with a dog that will actually a have a job that it has to do. Particularly, an important job. Yesterday was one of those days.

Dr. Gordon, a psychiatrist at Ft. Hood military base here in Texas is going to be taking his dog Lady to work with him. Dr. Gordon works with returning soldiers with PTSD and he’s found that having a dog in the room helps everyone deal with the difficult conversations and situations. That’s good for the people for sure, but that’s only half the story.

Lady, the dog, was found abandoned in a ditched car in the parking lot of the local hospital. No one knows how long she was locked in the car or anything at all about her history. All we do know is that Dr. Gordon rescued her and has been training with her since she landed with him. It’s a good match, probably the best match I’ve seen in a while.

So, long story short, Lady passed her Canine Good Citizen test yesterday and is now cleared by the Ft. Hood staff to accompany Dr. Gordon to the hospital and on all of his rounds with clients anywhere on the base. A true working dog!

Needless to say, I was pretty proud of both of them and I’m not shy to say that I had a tear in my eye when they walked away with their CGC certificate to head straight back to Ft. Hood to a group session with the soldiers.

Steve,

The best compliment I can give you is how many people meet Gunther and say (right away): “Oh, I can tell this is a Fidelio Dog….”

Marty J. S.

When a dog trainer (like me) starts looking for a puppy, I tend to start looking for English Cocker puppies.

This is a lovely ECS at 4 weeks old. Oh my.

Sometimes we dog trainers use this saying amongst ourselves to describe a predicament a certain client is in. We’ll say “It’s to much dog for him/her” Which really means that the dog is the equivalent of giving your 87 year old grandmother a Ferrari to drive to the market on Thursdays.

Often times this “to much dog situation” involves much care and attention from the trainer and much destroyed furniture, toys, house siding…on the part of the owner.

One of my most recent favorite Near “to much dog” stories involves this dog Ranger. Ranger came from a very high end breeding program that breeds for serious working dogs. He is a VERY high quality dog with excellent intelligence, maybe to much. Ranger’s owner is a previous client of mine and a very fine lady. She’s had Shepherds before so she knew what to expect. Well, she almost knew what to expect. This pup needed TONS of exercise both mental and physical and he was a bear to keep up with. So, while I can say he’s a handful and got near “to much dog”, his owner stepped up and managed to keep him at the ” all the dog I can handle” level.

So, as a tribute to this owner and Ranger, I took some photos of him today to show what a great dog he’s become. Kudos to Patti and Ranger for getting over the hump and moving on out into the world of fantastic companionship.

Sometimes we dog trainers use this saying amongst ourselves to describe a predicament a certain client is in. We’ll say “It’s too much dog for him/her” Which really means that the dog is the equivalent of giving your 87 year old grandmother a Ferrari to drive to the market on Thursdays.

Often times this “too much dog situation” involves much care and attention from the trainer and much destroyed furniture, toys, house siding…on the part of the owner.

One of my most recent favorite Near “too much dog” stories involves this dog Ranger. Ranger came from a very high end breeding program that breeds for serious working dogs. He is a VERY high quality dog with excellent intelligence, maybe to much. Ranger’s owner is a previous client of mine and a very fine lady. She’s had Shepherds before so she knew what to expect. Well, she almost knew what to expect. This pup needed TONS of exercise both mental and physical and he was a bear to keep up with. So, while I can say he’s a handful and got near “to much dog”, his owner stepped up and managed to keep him at the ” all the dog I can handle” level.

So, as a tribute to this owner and Ranger, I took some photos of him today to show what a great dog he’s become. Kudos to Patti and Ranger for getting over the hump and moving on out into the world of fantastic companionship.