Southern Mutt

01/03/2024

Attention all dog owners!
Did you adopt your dog in the past 15 years? If so, click here to help an ACVB resident with their research: https://forms.gle/TUhiPSCWw1GP4YQx5

12/08/2023

💯

10/03/2023

I am excited to announce that I have accepted the full-time Campus Director position with GoDog Chattanooga.

Thank you to all my amazing clients who have supported me over the past six years. I am so appreciative of your friendships and business. I will continue to take a limited number of behavior modification cases. However, my major focus will be growing GoDog Chattanooga.

Please stop by GoDog Chattanooga to say hello!

Say hello to our new Campus Director, Jaimie Shaw 📢 We’re excited to have Jaimie on board to continue our growth and high level of customer experience! Jaimie is passionate about helping dogs and their humans live their best lives together.

Jaimie is an honors graduate of The Academy for Dog Trainers, the most rigorous and highly respected school for dog trainers here in the U.S. and internationally. In addition to deep knowledge and experience with dogs, Jaimie brings a wealth of human resources and business experience in a wide range of industries.

Outside of work Jaimie loves to read. When she’s not inhaling the latest dog research, she’s often found indulging in her affinity for mysteries and crime thrillers. If her nose isn’t in a book, she’s probably walking her dog or jumping in a lake! Jaimie shares her life with her Standard Poodle, Cooper and her cat, Hope.

07/11/2023

I was voted one of Chattanooga’s Top Dog Trainers. Thank you for your support! ❤️🐾

https://www.sniffspot.com/blog/dog-trainers/chattanooga-tn

06/16/2023

PSA: Now is the time to update ID tags, chip information, and get anxiety meds refilled from your veterinarian. Fireworks are coming.

03/15/2023

Congratulations to puppy graduates River, Winston, Merry and their families! You worked hard and we had lots of fun along the way. 🎓🐶🤩

03/02/2023

Happy 12th Gotcha Day, Cooper! 💙🐾

03/01/2023

I have been nominated (Jaimie Shaw) on SniffSpot for Chattanooga’s best positive reinforcement trainer. Voting is open until Thursday, March 9. Will you cast a vote for me and Southern Mutt, please?

Vote here: https://www.sniffspot.com/blog/dog-trainers/contest?utm_source=trainer_contest.

Thank you for your support!!

02/17/2023

Congratulations to puppy graduates Elvis, Phoebe, Cadillac, and Penny Lane! These pups and their humans worked hard and it shows. 🐶🐾❤️

02/13/2023

Cooper: the a predicts b predicts c in this scenario is: you make coffee (a), you wait for coffee (b), you touch me while waiting for coffee (c), in case you forgot.

02/11/2023

Saturday morning puppy fun! 🐶🐾

02/04/2023

Let them sniff!

01/29/2023

The Resilience Rainbow 🌈

Resilience is the ability to adapt successfully to, or recover quickly from, stressful events, situations and conditions. Resilience relies on effective responses to environmental change, and resistance to the negative effects of stress, therefore a thorough understanding of the factors which influence these mechanisms is fundamental to raising and living with our dogs and other companion animals.

Whether a professional in the behavior field or a competitor of dog sports, we must consider resilience when creating training programs or addressing behavior issues. Most dogs around the world no longer live quietly by the fireside, roaming open spaces, without restrictions; and as society continues to change, our cities get busier and our lives more hectic, it's not only humans that benefit greatly from an ability to adjust and adapt.

Stress and trauma can have a substantial impact on brain function and structure, and can result in the development of behavioral abnormalities. But not all animals exposed to stressful events develop behavioral abnormalities, and those animals that don’t are said to be resilient. So what is different about the way the brains of those animals function, and how can we as carers influence brain function to improve resilience in animals. An understanding of resilience mechanisms is therefore at the heart of being able to effectively influence behavior.

Resilience Conditioning is not separate from behavior modification, but rather, should be part of every training program and behavior modification plan. Based on the human literature, we have come up with a program to support dogs. We are calling it The Resilience Rainbow.

Why did we choose a rainbow to illustrate this concept? Because it’s colorful and tends to elicit a smile when seen in the sky. We hope that training could feel like that for every person and their dog. 🌈

Also, there are 7 domains that we have identified based on the research done on resilience for humans, like 7 primary colors in a rainbow.

The Resilience Rainbow has 7 domains for resilience conditioning. Within each domain are exercises, games, and concepts to support the program. There isn’t a particular order, but rather, each domain is occurring simultaneously, just like each color of a rainbow.

Mental & Physical Well-being
Agency
Social Support
Safety & Security
Completing the Stress Cycle
Decompression
Predictability

We will be sharing more about this program over the next several weeks. Stay tuned!

01/28/2023

🙌🏻

This is so beautifully said and really fits with the ethos of my work. Dogs are constantly communicating with us. We just need to slow down and pay attention.

01/18/2023

I have recently started doing this with Cooper and he’s starting to show signs of connection with certain things. ❤️

Do dogs like when you talk to them? Using this "Mr. Rogers" hack to talk to your dog will help make them happier and calmer. Learn more.

01/16/2023

It’s ok. 👇🏻

01/15/2023

The world would likely be a lot kinder if we all became part dog. 🐾

01/14/2023

A really good one from The Family Dog!

Protect your family from the kid-dog pandemic that's spreading like wildfire! There’s a new virus in town, and it’s especially dangerous for kids and dogs. SPS (or Stuffed Puppy Syndrome, as it’s commonly known) is spreading like craaaaazy.

01/14/2023

❤️

01/13/2023

Yes, this! People are not entitled to interact with our dogs. No matter how flabbergasted they seem when you politely set an appropriate boundary.

This is a PSA for all guardians of fearful dogs, reactive dogs, dogs in training, and dogs still navigating their new surroundings: You do not have to entertain negotiations from "dog people" who won't take no for an answer when it comes to interacting with your dog.

For a whole list of scripts to end the conversation quickly, check out this week's blog post: https://rescuedbytraining.com/2023/01/09/does-he-bite/

01/12/2023

“Dogs aren’t obedience robots who must follow our every command out of respect for their leader. Dogs are living, breathing creatures, with needs of their own, individual personalities and quirks, and hearts full of love for their family members.

Maybe speaking of manners and cues and teaching instead of respect and commands and obedience is just a linguistic shift. But maybe it’s also creating a world in which we let dogs be dogs, and care about their happiness.”

The language we use to describe dog training is changing to reflect our changing relationship with dogs.

01/10/2023

Understanding what your dog is going through will help you be more patient. Your adolescent isn’t trying to give you a hard time. They’re having a hard time. They need support.

01/10/2023

Our dogs sociability can and often does change over time, just like ours. Here are some great tips to help you maintain your dogs social skills.

01/04/2023

Want to have a tired puppy on Saturday evenings? I have two spots in left in my Puppy Head Start class on Saturday's from 3:00-4:30pm. Register now before they're gone!

12/29/2022

Puppies hit well above their weight when it comes to distraction and chaos. Let me help you calm the chaos and get your pup on her way to becoming a good-mannered Southern Mutt.

Ready to give your pup a head start? Register for your puppy class today!

12/09/2022

A big congratulations to the final puppy class graduates of 2022! You and your pups worked hard and it shows. Thank you for all the fun.

11/25/2022

Happy Thanksgiving!

11/05/2022

🙌🏻

⭐️ SMARTx50 ⭐️
Interrupting habits & beginning to build a new behavioral repertoire

How this helps you and your pup:

SMART means See Mark And Reward Training. 🎉

Whether you are consciously training or not, pups are always learning. It’s imperative to reinforce behaviors you like in real life, not just in the classroom.

The goal of SMARTx50 is to capture and reward all the lovely behaviors your pup is already doing throughout the day. If you consistently reward your pup for lying down wherever and whenever it happens, your pup will likely lie down more often in many different environments because the behavior pays off. Playing the SMARTx50 game helps your pup learn to behave well in different situations. This game is great for adult dogs and puppies!

✅ How to play SMARTx50:

🔸You can use your pup’s meal to reward
In the morning, portion out what they would normally eat for breakfast

🔸When you see your puppy doing something you like, mark it!

🔸You can mark by saying “yes” or “good”, or by clicking a clicker

Some nice behaviors to mark: lying calmly, playing with a toy, chewing an appropriate object, sitting, making a cute face, lying on an appropriate bed or in the crate.

After you mark, give your pup a piece of kibble.
The goal is to "See, Mark, And Reward" 50 behaviors per day.

Thank you to Kathy Sdao for creating this fantastic game! You can learn more about it in her book, Plenty in Life is Free. 🦄