Reach The Stars Dog Training

03/28/2025

03/28/2025

🎉 We’ve Got Exciting News! 🎉

We are beyond thrilled to announce that RTS Dog Training has partnered with Canine Cottage - Tiny Tails to offer an expanded range of dog training services that you and your furry friends will love! 🐾

Starting today, we’re hosting Group Classes and Private Dog Training Classes for all ages and levels, including:

🐶 Puppy 1
🐶 Puppy 2
🐶 Adult 1
🐶 Adult 2
🐶 Trick Class
🐶 Scent Work
🐶 Agility
🐶 AKC Title Classes
🐶 Separation Anxiety

✨ And the best part? All of our classes are now available for online booking and purchase! ✨ Whether you’re looking to socialize your puppy or address behavior issues with your adult dog, we’ve got you covered!

We’re also excited to have Meg, a seasoned dog trainer with over 15 years of experience, leading all of our classes. Meg is a CPDT-KA Licensed Trainer, an APDT Member, an AKC Evaluator, and a Fear-Free Positive Reinforcement Trainer. She’s here to provide expert guidance and answer all your dog training and behavior modification questions.

Ready to take your dog’s training to the next level? Visit our website today to check out the full list of classes and sign up online! 🐕💻We Are Accepting All Dogs, Of all ages, and All sizes for these classes must be up to date with required vaccinations.

Do you have questions for meg? Call, Text, or email her at any time about all of your dog training questions and needs.

540-855-4900
[email protected]

🔗https://pawpartner.com/canine-cottage-tiny-tails

03/24/2025

Very Big Exciting Announcement to be made later this week. This is very exciting news and the start of a wonderful partnership. Check back later this week for the offical Announcement !

03/24/2025

03/24/2025

Renewed AKC Evalator this marks 10 years

03/23/2025

Day care is amazing guys for socialization and grooming. If you aren't doing it for your dogs you should I camt say enough good things about it.

03/23/2025

03/23/2025

03/23/2025

The Slope of your dog's pasterns....

A dog’s pasterns correspond to our wrists, and as McDowell Lyon points out in The Dog in Action, a dog’s foot is made up of the same bones found in our fingers with the heel that section of the palm at finger union. Put another way, a dog walks with his fingers in front. Dogs are digitigrade animals which means that their digits — not their heels — take most of their weight when they walk. A dog’s toe bones are very important, as are the front pasterns, that space between the paw and the lower end of the radius bone closest to the paw.

The pastern’s slope, the angle seen in the image, is about 20 degrees in many breeds with well set back shoulders, BUT, pastern slope and length vary by breed. The slope and angle seen on a German Shepherd Dog is wholly incorrect in a Treeing Walker Coonhound for which “the pastern, from the joint to the top of the foot is strong and distinct, slightly slanting but standing almost perpendicular to the ground.” Consider, too, the English Foxhound in which “legs as straight as a post” were desired, with the result of straight pasterns. As an aside, the AKC breed standard adds, “The desire for straightness had a tendency to produce knuckling-over, which at one time was countenanced, but in recent years this defect has been eradicated by careful breeding and intelligent adjudication.”

Check the breed standard to determine what is appropriate. As a rule (a very general rule), some slope absorbs shock and prevents knuckling over. It also helps lift the dog’s center of gravity. A short pastern offers more efficiency by working at a better mechanical advantage and greater endurance, but when there is too much slope for the breed, it is referred to as being “down in the pasterns.” Weak pasterns will cause the dog to lay his pasterns on the ground like a human lays his forearms on a table, but in the dog’s case, it’s not done willingly, but often because of pain. A dog that’s down in the pasterns will tire faster, and enjoy playing less (let alone working).

Books on structure correctly say that weak pasterns are usually caused from injury or genetics; in puppies, however, pasterns can also go “wonky” during teething when cartilage in the pup’s body goes soft resulting in low pasterns. This is completely natural and usually resolves itself in several weeks. Rapid bone growth, especially common in large breed dogs, can also cause pasterns to let down. In all growing puppies, walking on slippery surfaces makes things worse by making the dog strain its muscles and joints, so a surface with good friction is helpful for them.

Some people believe that supplying a dog with vitamin C can boost help with joints and connective tissues, but as with any supplement, a veterinarian should be consulted first. Others believe that when muscles don’t function well, they become “demoted “by the brain, and using something like PawPods to helps strengthen the musculature by biasing the carpus into proper alignment. In essence, it’s similar to the way an arch support works in a human shoe.

The internet is filled with sources about how to improve weak or broken down pasterns, but to help with it, one must recognize it. Conversely, over-angulated pasterns are also problematic, and we’ll address that in another post.

03/23/2025

Today is day, designed to raise awareness of what a dog wearing a yellow coat, yellow harness, yellow lead, or lead cover is showing. This is my dog in yellow, wearing his lovely clear yellow coat from Yellow Dog UK.

These complex and sensitive struggle with aspects of the world around them. It can be any one of a number of things, most commonly they may be anxious about unknown dogs or people. It can be for a wide range of reasons including but not limited to genetics, poor socialisation, pain, illness, or bad experiences in the past.

Finn (my gorgeous boy in the pic) covers a few of these. His mother was anxious and shy of unknown people (I found out later several of his siblings from his litter and previous had also been the same, so showing the genetic element). He was ill for several weeks right at that most important time for socialisation. And then, when we were able to get him back out into the world and experiencing new things, a loose dog bit him.

Any one of these things by itself could have potentially been enough for him to struggle with aspects of his world but combined together they left him anxious about the world outside of his home. He’s worried by any dogs outside the home, and people he doesn’t know. Livestock are also a worry for him, and he tends to huff at them from the safety of the lead while we’re out. He’s a lot better than he was in the past, the distances at which we can pass people in particular have come right down to the other side of a road, for example, and he can be more easily distracted from livestock. Other dogs are still tricky, apart from our other dog, who we very carefully introduced to him when we brought her home at 9 weeks old.

What Finn needs is what many of these need – space. If you see yellow please, take a second to call your dogs in close, or pop a lead on them just for the time it takes for us to get past if their recall isn’t solid.

We aren’t trying to ruin your walk or spoil your dog’s day; we are just trying to do what you take for granted with your dogs and take our dogs for a walk where they can feel safe and explore their environment.

To all the people who do just that, we appreciate you and send our thanks (but from a distance because )

03/23/2025

"She will be euthanized if you surrender her to us. We do not have space," said the shelter manager.
"Ok". And with that, Amy Marie found herself in a cold, loud shelter at 14 years old. The family she's known her entire life, all 14 years of her life, didn't even look back at her as they left.

We knew we couldn't let this be the end of Amy Marie's life and we did not hesitate when asked to take her. Amy Marie is on the hunt for a new home. Though older, she still has lots of s***k and energy in her.

We don't know much about her yet as she arrived, but are eager to learn what she likes so we can spoil her. She is in search of a foster or adopter.

Stop by and visit her this weekend!

03/23/2025

🚚 Free Shipping. New Customers Only!

03/23/2025

Fi Series 3

03/23/2025

"Yeah....why would you bother"🙄
Quite simply, it is transformative✅

Resource guarders
Reactive dogs
Recall
Confidence
Play
Anxious dogs
Optimism
Enrichment
Greetings
Engagement
Bonding
Fun
I could go on and on !!!!!!
There is a brand new video in the comments 👀about how to start this and expand it, also some ways it is used to help with unwanted behaviour.
You will NEVER regret teaching this.

This dog training graphic is available through https://www.abcdogsnz.com/product-page/abc-dogs-nz-touch-a-great-game?srsltid=AfmBOopR-uo45BCAiiYZ3y6dPxvIH30yC-cNVr9gQ5M3_NHF2h2Wp20T

03/23/2025

Congratulations to Kari Gibbons and Petr Ineman for reaching Nome in 27 days, 6 hours, and 42 minutes!

Kari is your 2025 ITI 1000 Women's Foot Champion, and Petr becomes only the second person ever to complete the ITI 1000 on bike, ski, and foot.

Pure grit. Pure heart. Legends forged on the trail.