Team K9 Training

11/11/2025

Reactive dogs often have very low levels in the ability to handle stress and frustration.

The leash is frustrating.

Being inside a house is frustrating.

Confined behind a fence is frustrating.

Not being able to chase, dig, shred, run, bark and on and on is frustrating for dogs.

All that frustration builds up stress when a dog does not have a pressure relief valve to exhaust that pent up frustration and stress.

Teach reactive dogs how to increase their ability to handle frustration and mitigate stress is vital to success with reactive dogs.

06/11/2025

The 2nd and 4th (in my opinion) are the most impactful to dog owner success at home.

Which is your favorite?

Do you have any questions about any of them?🙌🏽

Don’t forget to save and share these for reference!✅

04/11/2025

Babes, imma hold your hand as I say this…

….if your dog doesn’t have any desire to engage or participate with you because you don’t have a bridge for connection (food or toys or personal play) - you NEED to build that up first.

I mean yeah of course you can just punish your dog to get them to stop doing something, but is that really the type of life you want to live with them?

Which btw I’m all for using punishment when you’ve taught, managed, conditioned and proofed first and even then we need to have a conversation.

{{yessssss for the pedantic people that are taking offense with an 8 second video - intelligent people with critical thinking will know there is more nuance to this conversation. Intelligent people do not need nuance pointed out because it is inherently implied}}

♥️🫶🏼 For those of you new to dog training and genuinely curious, you can use toys/play or the environment via Premack if you don’t want to use food or your dog doesn’t like food.

What is most confusing to you about building up food drive with your dog?

30/10/2025

Ever loved your dog SO MUCH that you forgot where you end and they began?

Having a deep relationship is a beautiful thing…when it’s healthy.

But when your world shrinks down to just your dog or your dogs world and their emotional stability requires your presence and attention 24/7, we don’t build the independence both parties need to thrive.

Practicing the different things mentioned can help avoid turning each other into emotional anchors that can be a contributing factor into dog anxiety, reactivity and more.

Obviously there’s a lot of contributing factors to behavioral issues like anxiety and reactivity.

However, across the board, the the majority (not all) of anxiety and reactivity cases dog trainers get - a contributing factor is the emotional enmeshment that is occurring.

✍🏽If you have a reactive or anxious dog, which of the 5 solutions I provided do you know you need to work on the most?🤔

29/10/2025

29/10/2025

Part 1: Why your dog won’t listen to you or do commands without them seeing a treat in your hand.

As always, there’s more to a conversation than what you see in social media posts.

This is a great beginners area to this problem that many dog owners face.

Part 2 = the solution and why behind the solution so you can work towards a less treat dependent dog.

Did you learn something today or do you have this issue with your dog?

28/10/2025

It’s WILD some things that ppl comment on my videos like:

“If you don’t have a yard then you shouldn’t get a dog”

“Why even get a dog if you don’t live next to hiking trails to take them every weekend”

“You should only XYZ with your dog. I did it with mine and it worked”

I don’t wish severe behavior modification on anyone and certainly not their dog but sheesh some people need perspective that their experience is not the only valid and true one.

27/10/2025

Lots more nuance than what a 60 second clip can provide - but it’s a starting point.

Not the whole conversation.

Because people rarely read the captions before commenting - I think it’s going to be interesting the assumptions people will make in the comments.

They’re either going to give themselves away and fall into a red flag category or they will think I’m promoting some sort of camp or something when I personally mentioned nothing about my own personal beliefs or systems.

Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised!

In a world full of information, a lot of things can be true at the same time.

And it’s hard to know what’s not true, true and what can be true given specific context and nuance.

24/10/2025

Side note: enrichment can also be done incorrectly.

This is actually a way more complex and nuanced topic than people realize.

If it were ideal circumstances; I would like every dog and their owner to be able to participate in biological enrichment regularly.

Being able to run and chase, dig, stalk, roll in dirt, climb over and under trees, shred and rip things.

But…

That’s not always available to every dog owner and every dog.

Enrichment objects like food puzzles and toys can be a great alternative for dogs that need a pressure relief valve.

IDEALLY humans would not have $50-100/month memberships to a location that has a bunch of round, heavy, circular objects we pick up and set down. Our biological fulfillment was hunting, gathering and exploration.

There are pros and cons to EVERYTHING

But if you’ve seen this uptick trend about no longer giving enrichment objects to your dogs because it will frustrate them (it can but most times I find enrichment toys are too easy than too hard), or that you should throw them out and do “real” enrichment - I just want to let you know that it can still be a good addition in your dogs life.

As dog trainers, we simply also want to encourage you to also try and make an effort to allow the dog to do “real dog things” haha.

What do you think!?

Do you try and do both? What do you do?

If you can’t do both, why?

23/10/2025

Language is interesting because if your culture or societal structure you grew up in used this word as something to be feared….likely you’ll have a hard time practicing it.

For me I grew up in a bilingual household and extremely conservative Baptist Christian from the backwoods of north Idaho.

So the word discipline in the home I grew up with was uhhh well, it was something scary and for sure had a negative connotation.

However, discipline took on another meaning in my life when I put myself through college, joined a sorority, was a cheerleader at our university, had internships and a job.

Suddenly discipline was about self motivation, structure and it was the highest form of self love I could have provided myself.

The discipline I provide for myself now is:
- going to the gym 5-6x per week
- cooking all meals at home with whole ingredients 90% of the time
- structuring my time wisely for running my own dog training business and consulting company + personal life as wife and dog mom

For our dogs (and also for children) - discipline is usually management techniques leveraged to help reduce or increase behavior

I view discipline, not as something that is harsh, overbearing, scary or abusive

I view discipline as a framework provided that a dog or human operates inside of to live a safe and happy life.

In order to do that, you don’t allow certain behaviors to be rehearsed and you promote the ones you do want.

Like I said, due to culture, upbringing and how you view the world around you, words will have different meanings (or if you’re a di****ad and want to be pedantic or semantic) youll say that discipline means something totally opposite.

And thats ok! Words can have different weight to you.

Just some food for thought today!
What do you think? Is discipline a “bad” word to you?

22/10/2025

I like to place it on my door leading out of the kennel room or on the crate itself🙌🏽

Either way, what do you think about a system like this?

For someone like myself and others who deal with adhd symptoms, making the steps less tedious and reducing friction increases consistency.

Comment below what you think!

(Don’t forget to share and save for reference later!)

22/10/2025

Teaching accidental disobedience?😰🫠👀

Much more common than you think!

And a super understandable and easy mistake in dog training.

Good news is that it’s extremely easy to fix.

BUT you have to be consistent.

And depending on how long you’ve been training your dog like this, you may have to be consistent for longer than others.

Have you accidentally done this?

Are you maybe doing it now without knowing?😬