Windy Ridge Farm Dog Training LLC

05/18/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/VZcwPtWigZ4QMXAd/?mibextid=xfxF2i

04/24/2024

Finished up training with 3 crazy dogs! 2 are littermates and not quite a year old!! Great Job!

02/14/2024

Local Established Business.

We offer repair service and trade-in options? Visit our website or give us a call to learn more!
🔗 https://www.collarclinic.com/
☎️(231) 947-2010

02/06/2024

Some happy students!

01/16/2024

Puppies love to chase!

01/15/2024

I have a HUGE but SMALL favor to ask.

Go to my business page Windy Ridge Farm Dog Training LLC ( click on top left hand corner) then go to the 3 little dots…(on the side of page)

- Hit “Invite Friends”
- Select "Invite All"
- Done

You’ve SUCCESSFULLY supported my business for $0.00 and less than 1 minute of your time.

Thank you for supporting small and local businesses.

Copied but wanted to share as this is an amazing way to help a small business owners for free.

*I highly encourage my small business friends to copy this and use it!*

You’re supporting a local family that loves ALL of their guests.

Thanks in advance! 🫶🏾

12/23/2023

https://www.facebook.com/1400043447/posts/10224749152541740/?mibextid=Nif5oz

Until a year ago, I was a trainer with a very force free approach. I didn’t believe there was a place for aversives in dog training. I didn’t have a dog that required them. Lucky me!

Until I got this chap. My very much adored kelpie, Evo. Bred to move HUGE flocks and herds of livestock out in rural Australia. A hard-headed dog, with a mega independent streak.

I worked hard with him. I’m a trainer. I laid my foundations, as I have done successfully with my other 4 dogs before him. They worked, to a point. And then, they didn’t.

I was fully prepared to give him a breed-appropriate outlet. Alongside the other work I give my dogs, I have my own sheep, meaning I can work my own dogs regularly on stock. However, my small flock of flighty sheep was far too jumpy for him to work, and he was becoming dangerous out and about in any sort of proximity to sheep.

So, you may say, just keep him on a lead! Problem solved. Well, not really.

Management can and does fail. I have heard it from countless clients. I have had it fail myself.

I also live, with sheep on my property, and surrounding it on 3 sides. Everywhere we turn, there are sheep. There’s no avoiding them.

Keep him on a lead in the garden? We have a large garden and keeping him on the lead would be unfair. He’s an incredibly active, working bred dog, who would end up spending his entire life on a lead.

We also encountered prey drive issues out and about, particularly around deer. His recall was fantastic, but once we moved, our walks were either full of deer, or sheep and he could rip a long line out of your hands to chase something particularly tempting.

So, I decided to bite the bullet and e-collar train. Controversial, particularly online.

But, the absolute best thing I ever did.

The alternative solutions I had suggested were:

Keep him on the lead - I buy good quality leads, but they have failed on me before
Move house - we’ve moved to a dream house, not an option
Avoid places with sheep etc - hard when they’re in the garden
Long line - he could still pull a long line out of reach
Train him - he was trained to a very high level and we had reached the limits via force free methods.

Management fails.

I went through the process of conditioning him properly to the e-collar. I spent ages ensuring I got it right, he understood what was expected and that he knew how to switch it off. I invested in a pricey bit of kit, and I went about it by the book.

It’s transformed his life.

He can romp around the garden, he can walk through my sheep without batting an eyelid, he can walk off lead on the hills and he can enjoy walking in the forest even when deer run out in front of us.

For him, that wasn’t ever going to be an option without it.

Nothing was more reinforcing than chasing.

And it was going to get him killed. He’d have been shot, or hit by a car, or lost. All because I wouldn’t open my mind to using different tools.

Am I suggesting every dog requires one? Absolutely not. But there are MANY cases where they save lives. It’s both saved and enriched his.

He’s happy, he lives his best life. He hikes everywhere with us, he’s well mannered and fully reliable off the lead. He knows the rules, and that’s the key.

He’s not suppressed. He can still go off and be a dog. He tears around the garden with our other dogs, he sniffs and does dog things. But he’s safe when doing it all.

I see a lot of judgement towards these tools from people owning dogs who would never require these tools. That’s great. And that’s also not a problem. But it is completely unfair to demonise the use of a tool which you haven’t taken the time to fully understand. I was 100%, without a doubt, against them before I took the time to understand how they worked and how they were used.

It’s imperative that they’re used with a trainer well versed in using them. It’s also crucial that the equipment used is good quality and not something cheap from Amazon or eBay. It’s an investment, but one that is so necessary for a lot more dogs than you might realise.

Take the time to understand others’ points of view. There is truly not a one-size-fits-all approach in dog training and my change of opinion has opened up a whole new world for all of my dogs ❤

Photo by Saffy Leyfield Photography

12/23/2023

Hannah Cole, the woman I got Corky from, did this with her puppies! What a huge difference!

My puppy, Corky came right home and did not cry one bit in the crate. She would actually go in and fluff her blanket on top of herself.

Since she also did pellets in a potty box, I put a kids pool on the deck out of the weather, and she used them quite readily until she was big enough and confident enough to go put in the yard.

12/08/2023

11/18/2023

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10228526893391120&id=1646641942&mibextid=NOb6eG

10/18/2023

Great text to receive this am! ----from a client.
Good morning Ladies, hope you are all doing well. Just wanted to share with you that we (Freya & I) had our first porcupine encounter yesterday - up close and personal 😏
Fortunately Freya's obedience training won out and both the dog and porkie are unharmed.
After a "Nein!" And "leave it" , Freya stopped her headlong charge after the porcupine. She stopped, barked at it, and headed back in , bouncing in her tigger way, and that's when the E collar was the ultimate deterrent. I had to tick her with a short poke, she chirped and then went back to bouncing around the porkie and I then gave her a much longer tick...😳 - she decided that the porcupine wasn't worth the trouble at that point and decided that walking at heel alongside me as we headed back to the truck was a better choice.
I'm sure there will be other porkie encounters, however I'm just grateful to have made it through this one unscathed.
No doubt all the focus training over the past few months helped give me the time to get the E collar control into action. Thanks 😊
Hope you are getting out to run your dogs on birds!
Take care,
-terry

08/24/2023

https://fb.watch/mCzci5wHKA/?mibextid=6aamW6

08/03/2023

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10227844617334645&id=1646641942&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=VhDh1V

06/14/2023

Rizzo off leash.

06/14/2023

Rizzo- first day. Reactive to anything and everything. Owners could barely walk him. Chelsea starts to lay down the groundwork.

Second video was yesterday. He is happily off leash, ignoring the barking dog in the background, and the Brittney on the cot. So proud of this team!

05/26/2023

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=628010472700195&id=100064737442024&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

05/22/2023

Shelby says this is easy!

05/04/2023

Penny!

05/03/2023

Les Vandrie

04/30/2023

Rizzo with his owner in just one session.

04/13/2023

Before with Rizzo

03/22/2023

LOL