Come on Irene

My thoughts go out to everyone who had to deal with the latest Hurricane Irene, many of my current and past clients have suffered power outages and property damage.

We only lost electricity for 12 hours, we have a back up generator to keep our kennel running and did suffer any property damage, all the dogs were fine with the hurricane.

 

Uma coming out of the ocean 2 days before the Hurricane hit us, one of my most powerful swimmers. Uma will fight waves to retrieve a ball that is thrown out into the ocean

Plenty of inside training can go on even during a hurricane, Grace works on her Place command while Clover runs by her as a wonderful distraction

Romy is an extremely powerful pack leader, even dogs with problems with kids always behave around her..the energy she has is beyond enlightning

I love working with highly dog reactive dogs, the clients in the above photo have 2 highly reactive dogs and we worked through it in less than an hour, we role play the situation over and over again in order for not only the dogs to understand what is expected of them but also to have humans understand how to correct bad behavior

Chance and Markus in the Place command, we are constantly reinforcing and teaching the dogs on our property very basic commands upping the distractions each time in order to get the same results

Shadow taking a break from training

Clover and Romy walk around a clients dog in a downstay that has a history of charging at kids and nipping them

 

Forgive me father for I have sinned

I have not blogged for over a week.

I was having some issues with uploading my blog, not sure what has been happening. I have been uploading photos multiple times a day on my facebook  page. I also have been setting up Picture Gallerys on my website. the website has been revamped so you can actually make a donation to my rescue Jeff's Pack.

 

Clover and Romy with Callie, a dog from Newport that came to us for some good all fashioned dog training.

 

One of my clients has anywhere from 2 to 20 ducks go through their front yard every single day, so we were able to work on downstays with distractions..it does not get better than a couple of ducks walking by

If you go to the above button,you can donate as little as $1.00 to my animal rescue

 

when I have some unstable dogs I need to do pack training and balance out the dogs, off leash work is the best way to get dogs balanced

Max and Uma went to the vet for their yearly physicals, this is how your dogs are supposed to act when they go to the vet office..under control at all times

the chickens are getting bigger and bigger each week

 

7 dogs/4 miles and lots of tongue

Had a great 7 dog 4 mile pack walk tonight to finish off the weekend with..

3 new dogs joined my personal pack tonight, Mercedes, Bowie and Autumn..

Autumn is coming a long way with her training, she jumps right into the van and looks forward to the next training exercise we do with her..

 

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Just a quick video while I was walking of 7 dogs, all on my left side, all in a pretty good heel, all connected to 1 leash

Heading to our pack walk area

Max, Kendall, and Uman squeeze Autumn between them to help her with confidence building, it is incredible the power of my pack

 

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Clover eating up some steamed Clams, the girls has the seafood fever

Max, Uma and Kendall help out a 13 week old client learn how to run with a pack

Look at me doing my downstays

All I ever do is work with dogs, I take advantage of some down time reading the paper to work 3 dogs in PLACE, why not, when they go home, they should do this with their owners as well

Clover and Romy are such a big help when it comes to working with these dogs, especially with dogs that have human bite histories, like the one that Romy is petting

6 month old Mercedes getting some treadmill time in while I am getting some office work done

Downstay with Chicken distractions

 

Place command, we work multiple dogs in the same command, using the natural energy either balanced or unbalanced as a distraction

Just think about how easy life is without all the fighting...

Did you hear the one about the dog that took a dump as big as a basketball?

 

Bites are part of owning a dog

I get bit a lot, today after a bite from a dog, i was thinking about all of the people that get bites and make a big deal about bites..I am not talking about rat or a racoon or a unknown dog, I am talking about your own dog. For some reason we have the kill our dogs because they bite and sometimes they don't even break the skin but we feel the urge to just kill them.

Have any of you every left your bubble before? have any of you actually skinned your knee? gotten a paper cut? fell down on cement, gotten hit in the head with a ball, had a sports injury, gotten a black eye? a cut lip? have any of you gone hiking and gotten a blister? did you go back into your bubble? or did you wake up the next day and do it again?

this was from today, a small bite the size of a quarter, I was cutting a dogs nails, it objected and I got bit, dogs have been sent to gas chambers for worse than this...personally if my dog did this too me every day I would not kill the dog..I might wear gloves often, but I would not kill the dog...well how about if your dog bit you once a week, once a month, once a year? would you kill your dog. How about if your dog bit you but did not break the skin? just grabbed onto a piece of clothing, would you kill your dog? Well how about if you just thought your dog might bite you? would you send your dog to the gas chamber or give it away?

I stand here today to tell you, i will let any of your dogs bite me every single day, if that means I can save its life...so I don't expect you to since you are not a dog trainer but a dog owner....but lets stop making a bite a death sentence in our dogs...all of my toe nails have fallen off due to the backpacking and  rock climbing, they have grown back and I would let them fall off again to enjoy the backpacking I experienced with my kids.

Henry has a nice little problem of biting, big resource guarder around lots of things, sponges, bones, bottle caps etc..so not only do we train dogs not to pick up things that they are not to, we also teach them the OUT command, which means drop the object asap, no discussion

working dogs all day long..

Autumn has been doing really well on the property, she lives with my pack which has been helping her tremendously

Roca doing what he does best, making sure the chihuahuas can play hassle free

downstays in the grass, all dogs need to learn all commands on 12 different surfaces, so that they learn that our command have meaning to them

Deacon was in a great downstay while a cat came into the picture and crept by us...Deacon did great

someone is feeling quite relaxed on the property

 

From Ferel to friendly

I rescued a feral dog this weekend, Autumn is a 20 month old female dog, who it greatly lacking in human socialization, her first 10 months of life are a little unknown other than she is from TN and most likely had minimal human contact, her dog/dog skills are wonderful. She is a true pack animal, though lacking a human pack leader. Her next 10 months living with a dog trainer/rescue did not get the results that would get her to a place that would get her to be adopted.

Autumn has no obedience commands or dog/human social skills, imagine a wild dog traveling in a pack with other dogs, but never coming in contact with humans. If you have seen any National Geographic shows on wild dogs of Africa, this is Autumn.

I drove to NJ to pick her up over the weekend and I will do my best to document her progress both in picture, video and video commentary.

 

pick up in NJ went well

This was at a rest stop on the Merritt Parkway,

Autum had a bodyharness and a flat buckle collar on her with 2 leashes so if she got out of one the other would be the back up, she is an incredible flight risk, the first thing I did was take of the harness and put a small gauge prong collar on her. this way I can communicate with her in a way that she understands. For the folks that have been told that prong collars are mean and/or abusive that they make dogs aggressive, scared or nervous. It is the farthest thing from the truth, they unleash the true spirit in a dog, they are a great communication tool and I use them with all of my dogs...

 

Romy who is 4, is one of my dog trainers, she has the incredible abiltiy to work with 100lb dogs and run them through commands. Her energy is incredible

Clover starts working Autumn as soon as she gets on the property, Clover is 6 and has been training dogs for 3 years. Notice her hand postion and boy posture with the leash and dog, she will not allow to Autumn to fail, no pulling, no lagging behind, she is not allowing Autumn to decide what to do. She is insisting that Autumn follow her commands.  For all you assholes that feel the need to write me as to tell me how stressed the dog looks, go fuck yourself, go to your local animal shelter, save a dog from death, train it and give it away, then do it again and again and again, do it for no money, do it to save a dogs life, then you wont have the time to criticize me.

Clover giving Autumn a tour of the property, again, Autumn is not allowed to go in any direction that Clover guides her to.

Autmn has to head towards me (she has been heading away from people for the last 20 months) when she learns to swim.

Autumn getting on the treadmill, yes, I am taking a very fearful antisocial dog and putting it into a situation that will make it even more nervous..guess what...she walked for 10 minutes her first time on the treadmill and other than the first 30 stressful seconds, had a blast

notice my left leg up on the treadmill, it is there to recreate the heeling position that we do outside on our walks, this way her confidence is built up

 

After the treadmill she did a nice 30 minute downstay next to my desk

The great thing about swimming is that it is hard for dogs to run from us or bite us, they look to us for so much guidance as you can see how Autumn is nice and close to me. The feeling of swimming unleashes so much stress and anxiety from a dog, it is like floating on a cloud and is theraputic for dogs

Autumn's temp home in our rescue home until we get more kennels delivered this week

Our stunning Autumn our little wild child in action