Fetch Happens Dog Training

Home
Fetch Happens Dog Training

In home lessons, board and trains, and behavior modification in the Chester/Montgomery County Area

18/01/2025

Milo has one more week left. He’s built so much confidence through clarity in our expectations from him as well as what he can expect from the world.
🐾
“Yeah, buddy, you have to stay on place when we tell you to, BUT I will not let anyone bother you on place. You also have to come to me when I call you, but I’m not always calling to make the fun stop, sometimes I can add to it! No, you cannot bite my dogs or my friends, but you can trust that I’ll advocate for your needs to, so you don’t have to. Yeah, you’ve gotta behave at home, but I’ll make sure you get to run and explore regularly.”
🐾
These are a few of the agreements that I come to with my board and trains. I teach them what’s expected of them and then show them that I’ll uphold my end of the bargain to keep things fair. Next week, I’ll teach his owners about our agreements and show them how they can continue to uphold them. Bringing a living animal into your home requires structure and compromise, there can’t be any one sided deals.
🐾

31/12/2024

Giving your young puppy the option to wander out of your sight is a crime against your future self.

25/12/2024

Merry Christmas from the Fetch Happens Crew + Kingston! (He’s been giving modeling lessons to Journey and Tofu) 🌲 🎁

24/12/2024

Harper wants to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and happy howlidays! Check out the list of some safety tips to keep your dog out of the emergency vet this holiday season 🎁 🌲

https://www.fetchhappensk9.com/blog/howliday-safety

20/12/2024

9/10 trainers agree that begging is bad.

Not me though.

I think one of the most important things to realise as a trainer is that not everyone lives by the same rules. Not everyone can. What good is teaching you how to work through your dog’s resource guarding if they can’t hop on the couch with you again one day? What does it matter if your dog walks out the door first if your only goal is that they don’t pull you?

While we’re on the topic, would you believe that three of these dogs used to have pretty prominent resource guarding issues?

My dogs eat table scraps. My dogs beg (as long as I haven’t told them to go away). My dogs walk nicely but they often walk in front of me. That’s convenient for me and life with dogs should be structured around being convenient, at least long term.

Each one of these dogs has their own problems. Their freedom is earned as those problems fade away and it’s put on pause if those problems start to creep back up. It’s important, though, that their freedom CAN be earned one day. A life of constant structure and management is not a training success.

I don’t want to live by rigid rules long term. Honestly I don’t think I could. I play the rules game when a board and train comes home and those rules fade away through consistency and small successes. They go home and the rules game starts again but it fades away if their owners are consistent.

I want my dogs to come to me when I call them and get out of my way when I ask them to, I want them to chill when they need to and have fun when it’s time to be fun. I expect that they don’t cause problems for me or anyone around me. Other than that though, the rules are customisable to the dog’s needs and they should largely be temporary.

When I meet someone who has struggled to follow through with a training plan in the past it’s almost entirely because they either didn’t understand why that training plan was necessary or the plan was excessively rigid.

There are some dogs who always need that structure and never get to hop on the couch again or wait for scraps, but those dogs are few and far between if the work is consistent.

It’s all about balance.

18/12/2024

They’re ready to work! Kingston and Tofu are learning sit pretty for their dinner today and Journey is working on learning hold. Did you know just using your dog’s meals as treats for training games can make a huge impact on your dog’s confidence and emotional wellbeing? Studies show that dogs who know tricks are also 25% cuter 😉

20/11/2024

Archie just finished up his puppy classes and he’s learned SO much! When I met him he was a nervous, but extremely excitable tiny little guy- always looking for someone to pick him up or skittering toward something at the end of his leash. He’s still a happy, energetic ball of fluff, but he’s built so much confidence and gotten a great head start on his basic obedience. Watching him heel with his mom is probably the cutest thing I’ve seen all week 🥰

19/11/2024

We’ve missed you guys! I’ve had some tech issues over the past couple of months that left me unable to access instagram or facebook, unfortunately there’s not much along the lines of human customer support on either app which made things pretty difficult. If you’ve attempted to reach me recently and haven’t heard back, I’d love to hear from you! For the foreseeable future, I will be routing any inquiries directly to either the email address in my bio- or even better! You can schedule a consultation call directly through the link below. Glad to be back and happy holidays from the Fetch Happens Crew!

https://bit.ly/FetchK9Call

16/09/2024

Imagine being born in a time that “I got myself and my dog 3D printed” is a thing you can say.

03/09/2024

It’s a common misconception when greeting a dog that we should stick our hand out for them to smell. In all honesty, I prefer your hand over your face, but it’s still a behavior that a dog can misconstrue as rude, especially if you enter their space and then shove your hand even further into their space, such as their head.

There is a brief second in this interaction where the dog has to make a choice. Either a.) they will move away as they’re not interested, or b.) they can feel threatened and snap. Now, I’m not saying all dogs are like this, but generally, when we think the hand approach is a good idea, it's towards a dog who is not openly greeting us. Somewhere along our evolution, we forgot what a red flag is from a predator. Hello, if a dog is not actively trying to greet you, then they probably don’t want to meet you.

Here is the thing, most of us are taller than dogs. Generally, when we greet dogs, we bend over, stare, and do whatever weird behavior you think a dog may like, such as talking in a squeaky voice. The dog, who has already made it clear that they’re not interested, is like, whoa. This human is not behaving like other humans, and unlike us who ignore red flags, dogs do not and react accordingly because it is all about survival of the fittest.

So, what should you do instead if a dog is not actively trying to greet you? Well, ignore it. Yup, it’s that simple. If you want to increase your chances of the dog visiting you, stand and talk to the owner like a normal human. Don’t be a red flag. My guess is once the dog deems you not a threat and you’re pretty normal, they will probably come up to you and check you out. It can be that easy, and if the dog doesn’t, then so be it, he doesn’t want to be your friend.

Anywho, if I don’t do anything else in life but spread the word on how to greet a dog and allow you to keep all your digits, I will consider that a successful life.

So, the key takeaway is to stop being weird, be aware of your surroundings, and take a lesson from the dog: you don’t have to be friends with everybody.

As your teacher would say, keep your hands to yourself. 🙌

Wcdogtraining.com

26/08/2024

Roach used to be pretty dog reactive.

Okay, he was REALLY dog reactive.

I don’t think about it often and I didn’t then, either, because it’s just one of those things.

You get a nasty, high drive, low impulse control working bred dog and you just accept that you’re going to spend a few months of your life with a dog blowing up at the end of your leash.

I ignored it for a few months, just letting him be a puppy and hoping he’d choose a game tug instead of being a tornado on a string.

Always ready to catch him with treats and do a fun reward dance when he didn’t choose violence.

We were always addressing it with foundation, reward systems, engagement games- but never putting a stop to it.

He got to an age one day though, around 8 or 9 months old, that it was time to put a stop to it.

It was a little more serious and he was old enough to hear no.

This is where a lot of training stops for some dogs. There’s a movement of training systems that are averse to the idea of telling a dog “no”.

I get it, I really do, and I know I may catch some slack for this.

There comes a time though where the reinforcement dance and management doesn’t serve the dog.

I go slow with my working dogs, but there came a time in Roach’s adolescence where, quite literally overnight, he was no longer allowed to blow up on other dogs.

A few months after that, he was no longer allowed to hesitate when I called him to come to me or hit the deck when I told him to down.

That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Let me rephrase.

When Roach became a dog, he was old enough to be given the skills and accountability to act like one.

Like a dog who gets to explore mountains and rivers. A dog who gets to walk through town for more than a five minute training session because I didn’t have to worry about taming the tornado piñata.

He slowly began to enjoy ALL of the joys that life has to offer. I’d bet that he’s experienced more freedom than all of the dogs in a lot of suburban neighborhoods combined.

He is happy, confident, fulfilled, and safe, in a way that never-say-no training might never have achieved for him.

He’s not an outlier.

22/08/2024

I remember when I was handed my first ribbon.

I was sixteen.

It was a stupid little rosette pin that I got with my Poodle, Oops for a tricks competition at Petco.

There were four other people there and he won with a routine of spin, back up, spin, dance, and a grand finale of bow.

We won that silly little rosette that’s now crumpled and dirty from seven or eight moves and sitting in the bottom of a box between being hung up next to Oops’ giant, much more serious total dog reserve best in show ribbon.

They’re both equally as special to me.

That ribbon was the start of everything for us.

Every rally obedience ribbon, every giant rosette, Roach’s first place PSA1 leg medallion, every flat ribbon folded up and shoved into a dress pocket under crumbs of Stella and chewy’s patties.

They all came because that little Petco ribbon lit a fire that hasn’t stopped burning since.

Today I had the privilege of handing a first ribbon to a team that I KNOW is going places.

They worked their butts off.

They initially came for their Canine Good Citizen test that we’ve been working on, among other things, for quite some time. It was an overwhelming group in a new place.

I told them I didn’t think they were quite ready to test. I pride myself in being an objective tester, even for the “little” stuff.

I’m not sure if it was intentional, but they levelled up their handling right there, as if saying “watch this”, and fixed the things I told them to work on.

We said screw it and took the test, their handling was flawless and they rocked it.

I’ve handed out quite a few first ribbons now, all of them well deserved, but this one was special.

Good job Soumi.

19/08/2024

We ran out of things to work on during our lesson so made do with brunch instead 💅 Missy and Melody’s parents have been putting in the work with these two and it shows!

10/08/2024

Many people are ✨shocked✨ to see that my dogs aren’t super dog-friendly. They’re a dog trainer’s dog, how can they be so mean?

“Mean” because they don’t run up to other dogs, mean because they aren’t dying to meet your dog, mean because they don’t tolerate inappropriate behavior..

To me, they’re an example of dogs with healthy boundaries and relationships to others. It seems to be the “norm” for a lot of dog owners to expect other dogs to tolerate all of their own dog’s behavior. If your child was being harassed by another child, would you tell them to tolerate it? Of course not; we would intervene and the same should be happening for our dogs.

Any inappropriate behavior (posturing, face licking, jumping, excessive sniffing), or really any behavior that makes the receiving dog uncomfortable, should be interrupted or punished.

This can happen in two ways: we intervene which is the preferred method. If your puppy is face-licking your older dog and your older dog isn’t enjoying it/is trying to get away, etc, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to remove the puppy from the older dog. We should not except any dog to tolerate annoying behavior and we certainly don’t want to raise our puppies to continue this. Or if your male dog is excessively sniffing a female dog to the point she’s uncomfortable, you can interrupt or punish that with a “no,” a nick on the ecollar, separating them, etc. It is your responsibility to manage your own dog and advocate for others.

The other option is to allow the receiving dog to correct the inappropriate dog, but this is rarely efficient and should only happen under very strict circumstances. We never want to allow a dog we don’t know to correct our dog. There’s a good chance they won’t, which will teach tolerance, and there’s an equally good chance they will overcorrect, resulting in injury or fight.

Often a puppy is raised where other dogs are expected to tolerate behavior. One day the puppy runs up to a dog and starts behavior that they’ve rehearsed, the new dog doesn’t tolerate it and corrects the dog/starts a fight...

Read the full article here:

https://www.horizonretrievers.com/post/socialization-1

09/08/2024

Captain of Lily’s fan club over here, so proud of her ❤️❤️❤️

08/08/2024

Chip observations, day three: he appears to be a set of big ol ears with a dog attached

Address

17520

Website

http://www.fetchhappensk9.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Fetch Happens Dog Training posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Fetch Happens Dog Training:

Videos

Archie’s a very typical, very wild little toy poodle puppy. One things I’ve found with high energy puppies and high energy small dogs especially, is that it can become very difficult for them to remember that there’s a person at the end of their leash as they approach adolescence. This is where the search cue becomes a super helpful addition to the routine! I’ve used search extensively in the past for building confidence with nervous or fearful dogs, but it can really be a great engagement game if used strategically as well. Playing short training games with your dog that allow them lots of repetitions of engaging and disengaging with you can make training feel like a lot less pressure for everyone as well as build plenty of good repetitions of checking in with you even when there are more distracting things to focus on. Check out the link in my bio for a more thorough explanation of the how’s and whys of the search cue as well as the full video for step one with Archie. #dogtraining #dogtrainer #dogtrainingtips #reactivedogs #puppiesofinstagram #puppy

It’s a good day for an adventure. Have you done something fun with your dog today? #dogsofinstagram #dogtraining #rescuedogsofinstagram #belgianmalinois #reactivedog

Have you taught your dog a new trick recently? Roach’s training has been getting a little stale, so today we’re learning orbit and sit pretty 🐾 #dogtraining #dogtrainer #dogtrainingtips #belgianmalinois #dogtricks

Happy Saturday, this is an informative video. Please watch with your sound turned all the way up so you don’t miss anything important. #dogtraining #dogsofinstagram #australianshepherd #funnydogs

Journey and I stopped in to @tailwaggersbluebell to kill some time today and ended up finding our new favorite store! They have all of my favorites, including @westpawus enrichment toys, @saintroccostreats , @primal_raw dog food, and @stellaandchewys . This store is a dog lover’s dream and Journey’s paradise. If you stop in, tell my new friend Zuko he’s the very best boy 🐾

Chip joined us for a board and train because his nose has a tendency to really get him into trouble- dragging his owners, potentially disappearing… no bueno. Now that he’s mastered his recall and knows how to walk like a gentleman on a leash, he’s able to safely discover all of the great smells he was after. A beagle’s life is nothing without the freedom to sniff and explore 🐾 #dogtraining #beaglesofinstagram #beagle #rescuedogsofinstagram #rescuedismyfavoritebreed

Soumi and her family make me so proud ❤️ I’ll have to get a video of all of her tricks soon, but they’ve done such a good job with her obedience and confidence building. When I met her, we could barely talk over her barking and jumping. Look at her now!! 🐾 #dogtraining #dogoftheday #dogsofinstagram #lablove

Living vicariously through all of my foster friends… absolutely in love with their new addition, Ripley! He’ll be available for adoption in the next few weeks and he’s just the absolute sweetest 🐾 #dogsofinstagram #rescuedog #rescuedogsofinstagram #phoenixville #mainlinepa #adoptme

I got home late tonight and wasn’t up for a walk, but Tofu and Roach finished their night with a few minutes of training and are happy as can be! Physical exercise is great, but keeping those gears turning is the key when you’re on a tight schedule 🐾 🧠 #dogtraining #dogsofinstagram #frenchiesofinstagram

Shortcuts

Address
Alerts
Contact The Business
Videos
Claim ownership or report listing
Want your business to be the top-listed Pet Store/pet Service?

Country:

City: