Problem Solved, LLC (2026)

15/12/2025

Chappie is enjoying his first ever winter. The cold makes him SPICY. Show me your dogs enjoying the snow 📸

12/12/2025

My biggest pieces of advice for people when it comes to getting the behavior they want from their dog in public places?

1. Lower your criteria! So often we expect our dogs to behave the same in any environment. Expecting their focus to be as good on a down town street or in a store as it is during class or at home when we practice. It’s a bit wild when you think about it. Of course it’s going to be harder for your dog when there’s tons of new smells around and loads of distractions. Lower your expectations of your newbie dog, and celebrate EVERY win!

2. Increase your reinforcement. Your dog is working EXTRA hard at ANY behavior they are able to do in this challenging environment, keep your rate of reinforcement high to keep them in the game and working. Don’t wait for perfection, don’t ask for endless behaviors - reinforce anything you get!

3. Make it fun. If your dog is newer to training in more challenging public environments they will likely be a little nervous or overwhelmed at times. Don’t push them or add to the challenge, be on their team and look for ways to have fun. Praise, play, be silly - help your dog wiggle and wag and shake it off.

4. Start small. I always start a dog off with short sessions, the longer they’re in a challenging environment the more brain power they are burning, and it’s easy to burn out. I’d rather get 10-15 minutes (or even less) of a dog who is having fun exploring, able to engage with me a little and be playful than have a dog who is working for 30 minutes and ends up completely overstimulated. Short visits and make them longer as your dog improves.

5. Have predictable rule structures or boundaries, and stick to them. For me, those rule structures include not letting strangers pet my dog, and no hard leash pulling. Sticking to these basic rules from the very beginning set my dog up for success.

Here’s a short video of Chappie at Tractor Supply Company. We had been there for a few minutes, he’d had a good chance to explore, sniff around and settle in, was offering me good engagement and making good choices (checking in with me!) around distractions. We picked a quiet aisle to practice a little focused/engaged leash walking and some basic behaviors. This video is uncropped, notice how Chappie isn’t focused on me 100% of the time? See when he disconnects to have a good sniff? Totally normal! I don’t get frustrated I just reward him heavily when he checks back in. He’s being extremely good and highly successful because my criteria for him is appropriate for the level of training he is at, my rate of reinforcement is high, and I’m making the whole experience fun for him!

12/12/2025

Chappie was just due for an exam and a vaccination. He’s a busy guy and not a big fan of restraint or certain types of body handling. For his exam he’s totally fine since he loves to be cuddled and pet and his vet is excellent at turning a snuggle session into an exam, but vaccines or blood draws are a different story.

Thankfully his vet is amazing and lets me decide what the best approach might be for Chappie. For his vaccines so far we’ve found it’s best to use minimal to no restraint, and have him be in “wait mode” for a toy, then release him to grab that toy.

We’ve done it with a tug toy before, and yesterday we used a tennis ball. It worked great, total focus and comfort, big reward for Chap and an easy and successful vaccine.

Chappie is due for a blood draw for his first heartworm and tick test, so now we are going to start working on using a similar method to draw his blood. This weekend my husband and I will start to practice, with me holding him still as if for a blood draw, then releasing him to tug a toy with my husband. Once he’s happy with this pattern we will have our teenage human kiddo join the pattern and handle his legs where his blood will be drawn.

Hopefully in a week or so he will be ready for a successful blood draw with a predictable pattern he knows and his favorite reward.

Stay tuned for more!

10/12/2025

Just dropping in with one of my regular reminders that your dog does NOT need to be walking beside you, behind you, in heel position or even on a totally loose leash for them to also be paying attention to you, under control and walking politely.

Our dogs walk faster than us, it’s natural for them to be ahead of us (or behind us, stopping to sniff lol). Sometimes my dogs even have GASP a little tension in their leashes when we walk.

By my standards? That’s FINE. Loose leash walking is about understanding that you shouldn’t yank on the leash, try to drag me places or pull me over, and knowing that you should be listening for a cue from me such as a recall. That’s it. Unless you’re in a heel, walk how and where you want to be!

06/12/2025

Puppy 3 and Family Dog Manners graduated this week, and boy did they do a GREAT job with their loose leash walking exercises around distractions. It’s always a joy to watch these pups grow and improve from week to week.

Looking to brush up on your dogs basic skills? Looking for something new and ready to give a dog sport like Rally a try?

New classes for January 2026 are open for enrollment on the website. Sign up now before they fill up.

https://www.problemsolvedtrainingmaine.com/classes

03/12/2025

The amount of energy Fern had every.single.evening when she was a teenager was more than I could keep up with, every evening turned into "Here, shred this box, okay now this box, now this box, let's do 10min of trick training....are you good now?. NO?!?!" 💀

The batteries on teenagers dogs man....

01/12/2025

Chappie learning the “wait your turn” game with Maddie is coming along well, given how little we’ve been actually practicing.

Although it takes awhile to build real solidness and duration into this, learning how to wait your turn on a bed or station of some kind while another dog is worked with, plays a game or plays tug etc. is something I make sure that all dogs who live in my house learn to do. A real key for a multi dog household in my opinion

Proud of Chappies patience! He’s starting to learn this is a win/win situation, he gets plenty of reinforcement for just waiting, and also gets plenty of time to play and train with me.

30/11/2025

A perfect example of training in public and how to go with the flow when challenges present themselves.

Chappie is still young, and as anyone who has been following his journey knows, we have been focusing on rule structures around not interacting with strangers (human or dogs) in public and learning to focus on his handler instead.

As we ALL know, the public doesn’t always help with this goal. They will talk to your dog, talk to you, ask to let your dog etc. even when it’s clear you are training.

But you know what? That’s okay, it’s just normal human behavior, even though it can be a little annoying I prefer to view these interruptions as a chance to proof my own training and work with my dogs in the real world, where people can and will talk to them.

In Lowe’s yesterday Chappie was practicing lying calmly and watching a store employee help my husband find something. He was doing GREAT, and the store worker moved to walk past us down the aisle. I could’ve moved Chappie but we didn’t have a lot of space, and he’s handled lots of pass bys before (although not while excited and a bit overstimulated at Lowe’s) so I thought we would just see how he did. He did fine, until the employee did what so many people did - start to baby talk and approach him, sending him into a fit of happy puppy wiggles.

Watch how I calmly handle this situation. My focus remains on Chappie, not the employee, I simply step in front of Chap to prevent him from being able to reach the employee and using my body to prevent her from reaching him as well. As she moved on, I calmly redirected Chappie back down and praised him for handling it well.

No muss, no fuss, no need to yell at anyone or get upset that someone had interrupted us, and definitely no reason to be upset with Chappie, who is doing a great job learning all the things that can happen in public, and how the rule structures still apply even when humans are not following “the rules”

During our visit there were 3-4 encounters of people asking to give him a treat, pet him or compliment him on his training or his good looks. All of these encounters were great experiences- where I would either keep Chappie moving along, or block him with my body while being quick to calmly set a verbal boundary:

“No, sorry we are training”

“Yes thank you he is very cute, he can’t say hi though he’s in training, but you talking to him is great practice so thank you very much”

“He’s friendly, but he’s working right now and can’t say hi, thank you”

Not every experience has to be perfect to result in skill building and learning.

I think he handled this very well, what do you think??

How do you navigate strangers who want to pet or interact with your dogs in public when you’re training?

29/11/2025

Chaps first visit to Lowe’s. People are always in such a hurry to push dogs into big overwhelming environments like Lowe’s and Home Depot long before they’re ready. That can easily result in “flooding” - a term that literally describes a situation where you “throw the dog in the deep end” overwhelming them and not allowing an escape. Sometimes dogs in flooding situations can actually look like they’re “behaving” as flooding can result in a form of shutting down where the dog stops showing a lot of emotion or doing a lot of behaviors as the reach an immense level of overwhelmed.

While intentions are good, it’s important when we work on exposing our dogs to different environments, distractions and challenges that we do so in a systematic way that helps match their skill level with the challenge and help them grow those skills gradually in a way that builds confidence on small successes.

Chap has practiced in a bunch of outdoor environments and calmer indoor locations, but even so it was still a big experience for him.

We kept the visit nice and short to keep him from getting overwhelmed, played lots of fun, familiar games, and kept that reinforcement level high, and he did great.

Over time whe will be able to spend more time in busier locations but building a strong foundation by taking it slow makes all the difference.

26/11/2025

A few weeks ago (or maybe longer) I shared a post about the realities of owning a puppy at this stage of my life compared to the last time I raised a puppy (11yrs ago) and how much less time I have.

One of the points of the post was how I needed to prioritize with Chappie, deciding what things mattered the most as far as training, so I could make the most of the time I had.

My prioritization for him? Lots and lots of socialization and exposure to different environments, noises, weird sights and sounds, things that moved, people of all sorts and other dogs. And learning to just tune it all out and have fun with me instead.

We are now at an age where I am shifting and focusing more on teaching him behaviors - things like how to stay, or leave it, or loose leash walk.

I am often reminded of the benefits of the earlier focus I had with him on building confidence, calm and resilience around all manner of crazy things he might experience in life.

Today for example I had to go to Scarborough for a doctors appointment for my mother and Chappie came along for the ride and to get a walk on the way down.

After the appointment I popped him out to say a quick hello to my parents and stretch his paws in the parking lot before the drive back home. He was fast asleep in his crate in the car. I opened the door, leashed him and had him hop out, immediately he greeted his grandparents politely (well, with age appropriate politeness) and went for a stroll along the side of the road. The road was route one, cars zipping by, lights everywhere, lots of noise and general chaos.

For many dogs this might be overwhelming or scary, they might want to chase the cars, or run back to their car, or hunker down in gear, or even just need a few minutes to adjust to where they were (a totally reasonable response by the way). But not Chap, here is a video of him within about 3 minutes of jumping out of the car just hanging out and exploring along the side of the road.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times over, you can teach a behavior at any point of your dogs life….but if you’re lucky enough to own your pup from that very young, impressionable able, NOTHING is more important than socializing and exposing them to things in a safe and controlled manner. This skill set of handling change and chaos, noises and cars, new environments and unexpected distractions will benefit your dog, and you, for the rest of their life - even if you never teach them anything else!

The pride I feel in both of us when Chappie takes things in stride that might throw off another dog - even his amazingly well trained older sister - is an awesome feeling!

21/11/2025

My dogs surprise me with their ability to switch between ridiculous and silly to incredibly intense. Today was an intense mode day I guess.

Show me your dogs looking fierce!

📸

16/11/2025

Find someone your dog looks at the way Maddie looks at her dad 😍😍😍😭😭😭

Show me pictures of your dogs and their favorite humans 📸

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