Fetch Happens Dog Training

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

This is Frazier!  He’s four months old and just needs to learn some polite greetings and how to be calm when he’d rather...
10/03/2025

This is Frazier! He’s four months old and just needs to learn some polite greetings and how to be calm when he’d rather be chewing people, easy puppy stuff. I couldn’t resist getting a picture today when he came in for his lesson, can you believe how cute he is?? 😍

My personal dogs are friendly but quickly go into “everybody’s bestie” mode if I let them greet too many people in a row...
04/03/2025

My personal dogs are friendly but quickly go into “everybody’s bestie” mode if I let them greet too many people in a row, no bueno when you’re trying to enjoy a nice dinner on a patio. I protect my training dogs with my life. Here are a few responses that have worked best for me, it’s a little embarrassing, but practice them with a friend or even in the mirror a couple times until you can think of them quickly. I make my group classes cringe when we practice these together, but it’s so helpful to know you won’t freeze when someone beelines for your dog! People are more understanding than you may think, smile, say the awkward thing, body block when you need to, and advocate for your dog and the hard work you’ve been doing with them 💪🏼

Trick question!  Some things to remember.Your dog doesn’t need to say hi to every stranger in the world.Your dog should ...
20/02/2025

Trick question! Some things to remember.

Your dog doesn’t need to say hi to every stranger in the world.
Your dog should always have the choice not to say hi.
You should set your dog up for success by ensuring that they’re calm and confident before they’re allowed to visit people. Excitement can make dogs overestimate their confidence or set them up for an accidental jump or scratch!

What do you think? Does your dog love everyone or do they prefer to check people out from a distance before they say hi?

When teaching your puppy their name, do🐾 say it often and randomly, rewarding heavily when you do 🐾 say it any time you ...
20/02/2025

When teaching your puppy their name, do

🐾 say it often and randomly, rewarding heavily when you do
🐾 say it any time you have a treat for them
🐾 keep your tone and the way you say it consistent (no adding it to other commands 😉)

Has anyone ever made you feel bad for doing these things?  Don’t worry, you don’t need to be the pack leader and your do...
19/02/2025

Has anyone ever made you feel bad for doing these things? Don’t worry, you don’t need to be the pack leader and your dog won’t respect you any less for being cool.

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Fetch Happens Crew 💕
14/02/2025

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Fetch Happens Crew 💕

Willie has a really hard time settling.He’s like the dog version of the energiser bunny.My experience with doodles has b...
21/01/2025

Willie has a really hard time settling.

He’s like the dog version of the energiser bunny.

My experience with doodles has been that you either get a fearful dog who needs worlds of confidence building to function close to normally, or a little tornado on a leash who needs to be taught to think and settle. Very few in between. I say that lovingly.

Willie’s brother is an old student of mine so I’ve gotten to meet and dog sit both a few times before Willie joined me for training yesterday, Willie is the kind of dog that barks out every thought that he has and has to be peeled off of new friends. If we could bottle his love and happiness I think we could create world peace for generations. He’s gotta chill though.

Our first priority over the last twenty four hours has just been a LOT of jumping straight into relaxation exercises (and some structured exercise and play of course!).

Today he was thrown straight into my routine and came with me to get my car worked on. Fortunately he has some reps of my favorite sit on the dog adjacent exercise over the times that we’ve seen each other. This was the progression of stepping on his leash, waiting for a few minutes, and him settling. He probably won’t actually fall asleep and really relax during the short time we’re here, but it’s a great start to his stay!

He’s a quick learner 🐾

Milo has one more week left.  He’s built so much confidence through clarity in our expectations from him as well as what...
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.

Merry Christmas from the Fetch Happens Crew + Kingston!  (He’s been giving modeling lessons to Journey and Tofu) 🌲 🎁
25/12/2024

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

9/10 trainers agree that begging is bad.Not me though. I think one of the most important things to realise as a trainer ...
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.

They’re ready to work!  Kingston and Tofu are learning sit pretty for their dinner today and Journey is working on learn...
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 😉

Archie just finished up his puppy classes and he’s learned SO much!  When I met him he was a nervous, but extremely exci...
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 🥰

We’ve missed you guys!  I’ve had some tech issues over the past couple of months that left me unable to access instagram...
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

Imagine being born in a time that “I got myself and my dog 3D printed” is a thing you can say.
16/09/2024

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

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