Upper Class Canines

Upper Class Canines Puppy preschool
Basic Manners
Private training
In Home training
Board and train Upper Class Canines has been serving the Kings County area for 28 years.

The owner, Marguerite, Marci, is a Registered Veterinary Technician employed at the Hanford Veterinary Hospital. She has spent a lifetime learning about and communicating with dogs. As an RVT, she has attended many hours of continuing education in the field of canine social development, learning theory, canine learning and canine behavior. She is a full Professional member of APDT, Association of

Pet Dog Trainer, and holds a national certification from the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, CPDT-KA. She is an active member in the Society of Veterinary Behavior Technicians, National Veterinary Technician Association, California Veterinary Technicians Association. She is also an active member of the United Schutzhund Club of America, and the Way Out West Schutzhund club. In the past she has loved, trained, and shown a variety of breeds in AKC obedience trials, both titling and ranking the dogs nationally in their respective breeds. Over the yeas she has had several Therapy dogs certified through Therapy Dogs International, including her current therepy dog "Zuri", a Great Pyrenees rescue dog. For a change in direction, Marci raised , trained and partnered with a Search and Rescue dog for 9 years. Recently she has become fascinated with the sport of Schutzhund and is currently training her Bouvier des Flandres," Einon" for competition. Marci strives for excellence in every thing she does. Her goal is to help people establish a bond and trust between themselves and there dogs. With that bond comes appropriate communication between humans and dogs and from that point the sky is the limit!

03/02/2025

I love this

02/22/2025

A recent paper claims to show a link between punishment (or what they love to call “punishment based training”) and increased aggression in dogs.
This paper is by no means a study!
Here’s why it falls short of credible science: it’s a compilation of previously published SURVEYS and REPORTS, based on owner self-reports and behavior clinic assessments.
The paper once again relies entirely on other people’s data, without any actual observations or controlled experiments.
The findings are based on owner recollections, which are prone to bias and inaccuracies, and behavior clinic samples that *only represent dogs with pre-existing issues.
The paper uses cross-sectional surveys and retrospective case reviews, which cannot establish cause and effect!!!
Are aggressive dogs more likely to receive punishment, or does punishment cause aggression? This paper does not provide the answer!!!
Bottom line is this is not a scientific study. It’s a narrative filled with SPECULATIVE associations and BIASED data. Before you take its claims at face value, consider the glaring methodological flaws.

02/14/2025

For years, fluoxetine (Prozac) has been pushed as the answer to behavioral problems in dogs. Veterinary behaviorists and force-free advocates love to cite “science-backed” studies to justify long-term medication use. But here’s a big problem, most of these studies are flawed, biased, and rely almost entirely on owner-reported data.
Take, for example, the 2009 study on fluoxetine for compulsive disorders in dogs (Irimajiri et al., J Am Vet Med Assoc). It claimed fluoxetine helped, yet the only improvement came from owners’ OPINIONS, not actual behavioral measurements. When researchers looked at objective data the dogs’ actual behavior logs they found NO SIGNIFICANT difference between the medicated and placebo groups. But guess which result gets cited?🤫
How about the 2007 study on fluoxetine for separation anxiety (Simpson et al., Veterinary Therapeutics). The conclusion? Fluoxetine was effective … but only when paired with a structured behavior modification plan. And yet, thousands of dogs are medicated without any meaningful training, as if a pill can replace actual learning.
Sad reality is that Dogs are being drugged, not rehabilitated.
Ask any serious trainer what happens when they get a dog that’s been on fluoxetine for years. They take the dog off the meds, implement a sound training plan, and SHOCKINGLY the dog improves.
Not because fluoxetine “worked,” but because the dog finally got what it needed: clarity and proper training.
Yet, the AVSAB keeps pushing these medications while dismissing legitimate training as “aversive” or “outdated.” They’d rather chemically suppress behavior than actually address it.
The real question isn’t whether fluoxetine has some effect but why so many dogs improve when you REMOVE the drug and train them properly?!!!
Behavioral change comes from learning, not sedation. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise.
I know I am not the only one noticing that dogs on fluoxetine don’t get better - they just get dull.
The dog isn’t learning or adapting, just becoming more passive.
This can actuallY DELAY proper rehabilitation, because the dog’s emotions and responses are chemically suppressed rather than modified through learning.
Thinking about making a solo podcast to talk about the dog I have in training right now, one of the many that end up euthanized after YEARS of being on SSRI’s and the pandemic of prescribing psychotropics like flea medication

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1296 Normandy Drive
Fordland, MO
65652

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