Dog Obedience Training For Your Pet Dog

One of the basic techniques in training a dog to come is the use of a Long Line. Long Lines aren’t sexy, cool, cutting edge, or anything else. In fact long lines are probably one of the oldest training tools for working with dogs and, believe it or not, they are still one of the best.

When I get clients that want their dogs to have a good reliable Recall or “Come” command we spend a LOT of time with a long line. Strange, but most people find it incredibly difficult to work with a piece of rope 20 feet long. The dogs usually do fine, but the clients get tangled, wrapped up, and tripped up with long lines. The things are one of my favorite tools though. You simple can’t accomplish some things in dog training properly without the use of a piece of rope.

So, with all that said and done, here is a picture of one of my clients named Zimba working hard with his people in the park this morning on the long line. Good work Zimba and family. Thank you for doing your homework for me.

What you do with dogs is simply amazing – great service and great training.

Thanks so much for all that you do. I couldn’t agree with the below more.

BMH

This is the type of testimonial I love to see.

Steve,

Just had to tell you that we took Callie trick or treating last night and she did GREAT. That is something we never have been able to do with our older dog. The kids just loved it that she could go with us. She was perfect as she could be and got many compliments from other families.

Ben and I both send our thanks to you for all your help in training Callie so that she truly could be part of the family. Can’t thank you enough.

I did a post a couple of weeks ago about getting the dog to pay attention to you.

I’ve been lamenting the lack of comment on that post from my clients, but today I got this fantastic picture with the subject line “keeping an eye on the treats” which is how we went about teaching this pup to walk next to the person and watch. Needless to say, Zimba picked up on the lesson very well. Very well indeed from the looks of this picture.

Enjoy the photo and don’t you wish your dog had this level of concentration on you when out for a walk.

Zimba watching closely

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Ahh the sweet smell of success. Kat Wilson and Tucker just passed the Canine Good Citizen Test today. The great news is that Kat is not actually Tucker’s owner but his daily dog walker and she did all the training with him! I can’t say how happy this makes me that Tucker has been getting not only walked on his daily outings but also trained quite well by Kat.

So, if you want your dog trained to pass the Canine Good Citizen test and you’ve got some business travel to do, I would suggest you contact Kat at Over the Top Pet Care.

Congratulations to you both!!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer and certified Canine Good Citizen tester.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting to do more and more agility training. Now, I’m no agility specialist by any means but I do enjoy doing all of the basic work for it. Often times I’ll get clients to a very good base level of training by teaching the dog directions, target command, working on the “come command” (which is an absolute necessity in agility). After the dog masters these basics, I’ll usually send the clients off to an agility specialist if they want to compete or off to something like the Zoom Room here in Austin if they want to play around and have fun teaching their dog new things.

In all cases though, working with a dog by teaching them the basics of agility is a great way to engage their mind and get them to think about things in a new way. Anything that help a pup pay attention to their owner and gets them to anticipate what’s coming next is a plus in my book.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer

Well, Since I’m on a dog photography jag at the moment, here is another of the Border Terrier pup downtown this week.

Well, Just a shot of a client’s dog at Zilker Park yesterday with the dew. Loved the way this one makes the park look like it’s in the middle of nowhere.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer and part time dog photographer

Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten more and more requests from clients to do photography work with their dogs. It works out well for me and my clients, as one of my serious hobbies is photography. The easy part is that the dogs I’m working with and photographing already know me and respond well to the direction and are generally comfortable with the shoot scenario. The combination of the two works quite well and I always enjoy when I get a photo request from clients.

One of the by products of doing this is that I’m always looking out for interesting photographs of pets. Yesterday I ran across Stephanie Rausser who does just absolutely wonderful work. She’s a professional photographer working primarily in the advertising space but I loved how she captured the pets. I’ve clipped one of my favorites from her website to post here but this is all Ms. Rausser’s work.

Now, believe it or not it’s astonishing how many times I get clients that want me to help them stop the dog from running around the house/yard/neighborhood…while carrying “intimates”. It’s a pretty common request and that’s why I loved this picture. So Kudos to Ms. Rausser for her fine pet photo work. She has a level of intimacy with her subjects that I admire greatly.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer and sometimes pet photographer.