David Tirpak (2024)

08/04/2020

You guys voted so tonight’s the night!
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While we’re all stuck at home I wanted to provide some fun new content for our followers. We will be having our first ever Instagram live dog talk and Q&A on my business page . Today’s episode will be with
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Dave from The Art Of Dog has been a close friend of mine for a while now and is a dog trainer up in Buffalo NY.
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Tune in on instagram on the page at 4pm tonight to catch the live stream we do together where we hang out, talk dogs and dog training, and answer some questions live for you guys!
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ONCE MORE. THIS WILL TAKE PLACE ON MY BUSINESS PAGE SO TOSS IT A FOLLOW AND BE READY!

28/11/2019

Black Friday sale. If you’ve ever wanted to book training with me how’s your shot for the best deal you’ll find in town..
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MUST BE BOOKED BY THE END OF THIS WEEKEND!! Email [email protected] for more info!
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3 week board and train $1820 (originally $2600)
4 week board and train $2240 (originally $3200)
4 session dream walk course $560 (originally $800)
7 session foundational obedience course $875 (originally $1250)
10 session advanced obedience course $1090 (originally $1550)

02/02/2019

My buddy is in town for the weekend and we will be filming a Q&A show tomorrow together. Submit your dog questions bellow for us to answer for ya!

29/12/2018

Ok guys it’s that time..

If I’ve ever helped you in any way with your dog wether in person or through my content I’d LOVE for you to hop to our new google listing and leave a review. This helps TREMENDOUSLY and would be much appreciated 🙂

https://g.co/kgs/rYrJ2p

17/12/2018

Rosie is a dog that finished up her behavioral modification board and train just over a week ago. I didn’t get as much video of her as I would have liked to while she was here but I managed to grab some from our first follow up session yesterday!! Rosie has a whole slew of insecurity issues that were resulting in some seriously aggressive responses to the family members in the house and strangers.
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Yesterday reports are that she is KILLING it and hasn’t had any hiccups with falling back into the routine at home.
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A lot of times when we see dogs like Rosie we are dealing with a nervous dog that doesn’t feel like they can communicate with us or we can communicate with them. That lack of communication mixed with their insecurities results in them just impulsively trying to make people go away. So how did we work through this?? We taught her HOW to communicate. We established very clear language to be able to bridge the gap and make her understand us more. In addition to that we rooted out a lot of the bad habits in the he that were resulting in accidentally reinforcing some of these behaviors.
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So excited to continue working with Rosie and her owners at home to make sure she stays on the right track!

17/12/2018

It’s been a minute since I’ve made a post about this but this session I did yesterday with Bear the GSD inspired me to talk about it again.
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I see TIME and TIME again trainers posting videos of dogs freaking out at the end of the leash lunging at dogs looking all scary. I even get dogs that come to me who have been told by multiple other trainers that their dog is highly dog aggressive and will likely never be able to interact with other dogs. Most of these dogs do not ACTUALLY have aggression issues. They have Reactivity issues. So where does this come from? Two things.
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Reactivity is typically stemmed from the leash or some sort of physical or mental restraint that is being put on the dog in conjunction with the dog not having a proper social outlet to actually interact with other dogs.
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Let’s use this dog as an example. Bear is a 2 year old German Shepherd who has not socialized with another dog in well over a year. In addition to that he has poor leash manners which cause him to strain to the end of the leash and pull (physical restraint). When he sees another dog the combination of the novelty of NEVER being able to interact with another dog and the restraint of being held back causes him to display very “scary” looking responses which is just a build up of all of this frustration.
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So how do we fix this?
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First we have to address the leash manners. At the beginning of the session, we worked on his leash skills and teaching him to pay attention and follow us on the leash. We showed his owner how to correct for his lack of impulse control to other things out on the walk. Second we gave him a social outlet to confirm that he was in fact not acting aggressively but just needed to know that he COULD play with other dogs. There would just be a time and a place for it.
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Check out this video. It’s beautiful to me to watch stuff like this unfold and for these dogs to open up.

01/12/2018

Serious post alert..
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As I’m sure quite a bit of you have noticed I have been incredibly distant over the last few months. I have seriously stepped away from social media and been keeping my head low and mentally preparing myself for some big changes that were coming. Today we officially made the announcement that starting January 1st I will no longer be with the Heights Canine family and will be stepping down from ownership.
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These last 3 years have been absolutely unbelievable. I have been able to achieve things that most 24 year olds can only dream of achieving. I’ve been apart of building something into a nationally recognized business that employees upwards of 20-25 people. But somewhere along the lines I started to lose myself a little bit. Things I cared deeply about stopped mattering as much to me as my attention was shifted onto many new things. After much much debate I felt it was best for me to hit the “hard reset button”.
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Starting January 1st myself as well as the staff at our Berea Rd location will be launching a new company to try to get back to the roots of what it is that I love doing. Training dogs. We will be operating out of the same facility in Cleveland and offering some exciting new training services alongside the 2 day per week socialization daycare and boarding we currently provide.
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As the final details get outlined I want to clarify three major things..
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1.) Heights Canine will NOT be going out of business. Jake Scott will continue running the business from the original South Euclid location and still offering all current services there. I highly encourage east side clients to continue taking full advantage of these services moving into the new year.
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2.) nothing will change as far as booked services at the Cleveland location. All current training programs will be honored, all current boarding reservations will still be honored and booked for the future, all current daycare packages will be honored and we will be offering these services to all current clients. The only change will be the daycare and boarding will be exclusive to past or current training clients. Any clients currently using these services that are not training clients will be grandfathered in.
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3.) continue to bear with us as the final details get ready to be announced. You will hear more on the new business in the coming weeks.
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I can’t thank everyone enough for helping to make my wildest dreams come true and supporting me along the way.

28/11/2018

A commonly overlooked factor in working with dogs with behavioral issues is the added distraction proofing that needs to be done when there is another dog in the house. Daxos the reactive GSD I posted about last week had his third session today. He is doing FANTASTIC at home but the problem is if his owner tries to walk him with the other dog in the house he starts getting a little squirrelly again. The other dog doesn’t have a ton of formal training but does not have very many behavioral issues at all so it was never a thought to implement these techniques with that dog as well. The problem is, even though the other dog isn’t reacting and acting aggressively, it still is creating additional energy on the walk that is getting Daxos fired up.
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So today we spent the session focusing just as much on the other dog as we did Daxos. We conditioned in the same following principles to make sure that both dogs were following the same direction from their owner and no one was attempting to lead and get anyone messed up.
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Leadership in multidog households isn’t about chasing symptoms and working on only the dogs that are acting out. It’s about making sure that clear communication is established. It’s about making sure that each dog sees that YOU are able to influence ALL parties wether they truly need it or not.
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Check out this quick before and after clip from the session!

14/11/2018

Clear communication creates clear expectations for the dogs that you are working with. It is ESSENTIAL to be able to define the specific markers (your language) that you use to ensure there is no confusion when shaping new behaviors.
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Here is are the 4 markers that I utilize and the specific meanings to them. "yes", "good", "no", and "okay". Keep in mind that these are just the words that I use and they may be swapped out with whatever you would like to use so long as they have clearly defined meaning.
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YES
- this is a reward marker that terminates the behavior. When the dog hears "yes" they are free to get up out of the position, come to me, and receive a reward (typically food or toy). We will typically use this marker when teaching new commands to quickly end the behavior, reward, and repeat, ensuring that we can get lots of reps in in a short time frame. Any time we use our "yes" marker we 100% of the time will give the dog a reward to maintain the integrity of the mark.
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GOOD
- this is a bridge marker meaning "I like what you're doing, continue doing it and I may or may not bring you a reward" (typically food or physical praise). I use my good marker as a bridge between behaviors communicating correct choices or to reward the dog in the middle of a sequence of commands without releasing them.
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NO
- this is my negative marker. We classically condition this word to a consequence or "punishment" (typically a remote collar correction, leash correction, or anything else your dog perceives as negative). We can use this marker to alter or inhibit unwanted behaviors or correct for non compliance of a known command. To ensure we maintain the integrity of the marker it is ESSENTIAL to follow up our negative marker with a punishment 100% of the time.
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OKAY
- this is my standard release command. It simply means "you are free". I use this marker when I want to end a behavior or release my dog from a command but I have no intention of rewarding the behavior. There is no expectation from the dog that anything will occur other than them being free to do as they please

14/11/2018

Dog reactivity is the single most common behavioral issue that I work with. It is also the single most common thing I see people going from trainer to trainer trying to solve with little success. So let’s break down why people aren’t successful with reactivity and how we go about solving it in a slightly different way.
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It’s common practice in the dog training community to try to do one of two things to address the reactivity.
1.) address reactivity by teaching a non compatible behavior like sit, heel, or down and correct the dog for the non compliance of that behavior. The problem with this tactic is it doesn’t actually tell the dog what you DONT want them to do. Just what you do want them to do. They don’t perceive the correction for not sitting as “don’t react to this dog”, they just perceive it as “I should be sitting right now”. I always try to ask myself “what would the dog be doing if I WAS NOT asking them to do this obedience command”.
2.) the positive only community will try to counter condition the behavior only using food. Reinforcing for eye contact and using the food to redirect their attention off of the dog or “create a more positive association with looking at the dog”. The problem with this method is you are still only telling the dog what you want them to do, and at times just distracting them from reacting with the food. Because there is nothing telling the dog don’t do this specifically it keeps you in a cycle of needing to work very far from the distraction and using food without ever inhibiting the reactive response.
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You will see 3 short clips in this video. The first one being the dogs initial reactivity to the other dogs (minor in comparison to what it was when he first walked in). The next clip is him walking in the same room with another dog ignoring him. This was post me punishing the reaction. I used a bonker to do this (for more info search on YouTube Gary Wilkes bonker). Once I knew that the reactivity was gone I proceeded to add in a reinforcement to then strengthen the new response of not reacting. We utilized a “yes” marker paired with food for eye contact in the presence of the dog.
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This formula of not asking the dog to do anything specific, communicating clearly what we DONT want the dog to do, inhibiting that behavior, then reinforcing what we DO want the dog to do successfully gives the dog a clear understanding of YES and NO helping to eliminate the behavior once and for all.

09/11/2018

As a dog trainer it can get easy to wrap yourself up in the whole philosophical side of the industry. Focusing on explaining concepts to clients and working on the human. But we HAVE to make sure we’re still focusing on our craft and putting out the highest level of training possible too.. showing that work and making sure people can SEE what all of that “ra ra” gets them if they put in the work and do what is asked of them.
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This is a quick clip of me working Kingston who is in for boarding right now. Kingston did a board and train about 2 years ago and comes in for boarding and daycare on a fairly regular basis. As a training company FIRST, no matter what service your dog comes in for, they will always get the attention needed to leave looking better than when they came in. Always working to better our craft and keep these dogs in tip top shape.

06/11/2018

Training for the real world and clients who put in the work.
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Ginger completed her board and train for reactivity and on and off leash obedience training about two months ago. Yesterday we did another one of our monthly tune up sessions at Home Depot and watched her and her owner KILL IT! I almost didn’t even need to say anything the whole session because of how great ginger performed and how well her owners handling skills have gotten.
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This brings me to an important topic. Our board and train programs include TWELVE MONTHS of follow up training. Once per month tune up sessions. I tell every client that leaves that it would be stupid of them to not take full advantage of them. The more you have an outside set of eyes watching your handling the better you get. The more accountability you have behind maintaining your training and improving on your relationship with your dog the more things you can do with them. If you wait u til you start having problems with your dog again before you reach back out there is a good chance you will play the game of chasing symptoms and never achieving long term success.
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Put in the work. Board and trains aren’t a quick fix. They establish foundational skills and a blueprint for you to achieve the results we achieved so you can then go home and understand how to communicate with your dog in any situation. Train for what you wanna do. Go new places. Enjoy your dog.

31/10/2018

Today I said goodbye to my giant dufus buddy Legend.
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Legend spent quite a long time with us as he worked through a whole slew of issues and pushed all of our buttons left and right. At 1 year old this big dude can be QUITE the handful.
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It’s really difficult to not develop a super close relationship with all of the dogs that come here for training. Particularly the ones that have more serious behavioral issues. There isn’t much that brings you closer with an animal that bridging the gap between complete communicational disconnect and some degree of clarity and understanding.
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For sure gonna miss this guy.

28/10/2018

Dreaming of nicer weather to be outside with the dogs as opposed to trapped indoors while it tsunamis out..
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Here are two shots from my trip to with board and train Dash.

27/10/2018

Continuing to document Legends progress as we push him as much as possible this final week before he goes home.
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Legend has serious socialization issues with new environments. He gets easily overwhelmed and easily overly concerned with new people places or things.
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In order to work through this we first taught him a very clear language in a controlled environment. We taught him the meaning of yes and no. We made sure that we had trained verbal cues and commands. Next we began generalizing those cues to as many different places as possible making sure that we could begin communicating with him and overriding those concerns when they began happening.
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Every day we are getting him somewhere new working through this and we are seeing him continue to get better and better each time. Check out this quick clip from our session earlier today!

26/10/2018

Group control on our evening off leash walk.
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Multi dog households are tricky. Lots of people approach getting a second dog with the mentality of “this is a good idea because then they will just wear each other out” and think it will stop all of their current dogs bad behaviors. In reality you then just wind up with two poorly behaved dogs.
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You shouldn’t consider getting a second dog until you have control over the first. Any issue that you run into in a multi dog house hold will be due to the fact that you don’t actually have the ability to individually influence their behavior. Save yourself the headache.

25/10/2018

Big and small featuring Legend and Polly. Both dogs are in for similar issues. Massive amounts of insecurities and fears. Legend shows this with a very strong flight response and tries to run and hide. Prolly shows this by acting aggressively and trying to bite. Remember guys.. just because your dog is big doesn’t automatically mean they’re gonna be tough and confident. And just because your dog is little doesn’t mean they will be fun and cuddly.
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Also.. I definitely stopped to take this picture because fall colors are actually the best..

23/10/2018

“Groot come!” Action shot from our park session today 👌👌.
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This little dude has been killing the game with his training as he wraps up his final week in our board and train program. Swipe to see the action ⏭
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📸📸:

22/10/2018

Taking full advantage of the sunshine today and getting some of the board and trains on public outings to new parks they haven’t been to yet.
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Today took Tahoe, Rowan, and I to to work on obedience work and passbys with new dogs. They both killed it.

22/10/2018

Continuing to document progress with “little bit” the incredibly dog reactive pittie..
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This dude has definitely peaked on the more extreme end of reactivity that I’ve worked with. I’ve posted a few clips of us working with him at my training center around other dogs and him doing very well but one important thing to remember is you then have to generalize “not reacting” to new places to truly achieve success.
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Yesterday we took him out to a brand new park and he killed it. We passed by probably 6 dogs and only had very minimal reactions that we needed to correct for (using a pet corrector). I was very very impressed that the foundation we layed at the shop and the work his owner has been doing at home positioned us to be able to communicate with him so well while we were in a brand new place.
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Swipe left to see the before video!

20/10/2018

“Those are some nice dogs ya got there!”
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My pack out on a walk through the neighborhood enjoying all the perks of total off leash reliability because of ecollars.

19/10/2018

#🐍
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📸📸:

15/10/2018

Today was a big day for Mr Oliver. Oliver started with me just over 2 months ago doing one on one sessions. Oliver was struggling with some food aggression issues, basic handling aggression over ears, nails, etc, and did not have the communication in place to keep him successfully. In addition to that his owner had some personal hurdles to get over that were holding the team back from having the relationship that was possible.
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He had seen another trainer and unfortunately didn’t get a whole lot accomplished. Luckily Oliver’s owner had been following for a while and he was able to refer her out to me to get some help.
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Week by week we chipped away at layers both with the training, the human, and the dog. There were ups and downs to work through. Luckily all parties involved were just as committed to getting past all of this.
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Oliver has made so much progress in his sessions and I’m so happy to have been able to watch and be a part of the progress that they have made together. Remember guys.. if you want to get over the problems you’re having with your dog it is SO much more than just training the dog. You have to be just as committed to changing yourself if you expect your dog to change for you. As long as you’re willing to do that. The opportunities are endless of what you can accomplish!
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Photo 1: check out how good of a boy I am..
Photo 2: the struggle of getting him to pose for the camera to look like a good boy 😂

13/10/2018

Everyday behavioral issues that for whatever reason people are seeing 1, 2, 3 other dog trainers to solve without ever actually getting past the issue. Leash reactivity is probably number one in that list. Does this very first clip look like something your dog does when they see another dog? Well this was achieved in just two sessions this this little one.
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Sometimes as dog trainers we try to get from point a to b by zig zagging all over the place with things that aren’t actually necessary to actually get past the problem. There are only two things you need to figure out in order to solve these issues.
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1.) can you figure out what the reinforcement is behind the behavior. Why are they doing it and what things are going on in the environment or coming from the human that may be contributing to the problems. In the case of reactivity, it could be on leash greetings with other dogs when your dog is insecure and actually needs to see you as someone who will keep threats away. It could be consoling the dog when they are reacting or physically holding the dog back which can be perceived in the dogs head as reinforcement for the behaviors they are doing. Figure out these things and get them eliminated first.
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2.) Can you figure out what the dog is motivated by in order to tie a consequence to the SPECIFIC behavior that you are trying to eliminate?? This means finding the right tool for the job. Conditioning in a negative marker. And applying that then to the specific behavior of reactivity.
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In this video you will see exactly that. A dog freaking out at other dogs. The behaviors coming from too much restraint of not understanding the leash and owners who with the right intentions have accidentally reinforced some of these actions. You will then see the following clips of the leash walking fixed and the dogs reactivity curves as we teach her how to coexist around them without acting on the impulse of lunging at them.

09/10/2018

Achieving balance and control amongst your pack..
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I shot this quick clip while out on a quick morning walk with my dogs. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t walk my dogs anywhere near as much as I should BUT I’ll also be the first to admit that when I do make the time for it I see immediate changes in their behavior in the house for the whole rest of the day.
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The walk is the single most important thing you can do with your dogs on a daily basis. Especially in a multi dog household. But not just any walk, a structured walk where all parties involved are 100% in tune with each other. This is your prime opportunity to keep them mentally engaged and thinking while around tons of environmental distractions as opposed to just being in autopilot and simply reacting to their environment. 20 minutes of structured walking will get your dog more mentally and physically tired and fulfilled than 1 hour of “fun free walking”. In multi dog households it also gets all parties understanding that they are following ONE person. There is no fighting for hierarchy amongst each other.

08/10/2018

pt2. Featuring Legend. Legend is yet another large breed dog currently enrolled in a board and train for some fear aggression issues. It seems the larger they are, the more fearful and unstable of temperaments they have. This is directly due to poor genetics from bad breeding. As such hot of a commodity as these dogs are, unfortunately there are lots of people breeding these dogs when they shouldn’t be. Because of this their genetics are usually off and they are predisposed to having some serious behavioral issues.
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As always, we’ll be putting legend through our standard on and off leash obedience training program, pushing socialization with other dogs and people, and getting him the environmental socialization that he needs in order to keep him in the best state of mind possible for his owner.
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📸📸:

07/10/2018

Diesel graduated from a board and train for human aggression issues. His owners have done exactly what they should have and maintained his training at home as well as took advantage of all of the follow up support we provide post board and train. Because of this he has continued to excel and can now do so many things they never thought they would be able to do with him.
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On another note.. Look at this dudes giant head!!

03/10/2018

Here’s a quick video I made the other day while working one of our board and trains. One important thing I like to do with all of the dogs that come to the facility is out of sight duration work. So making sure that not only will the dogs hold command (bed stays or down stays) while having watchful eyes on them, but also while there is no one present in the room. Adding this additional layer of proofing to the commands ensures that the understanding of what is expected is as clear as possible.
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How do we build up to this point? Simple..
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1. Start with teaching the commands. We utilize a combination of food, leash pressure, and ecollar to teach these things.
2. Build duration while you are in plain sight. Put the dog in command (remember! Don’t say stay. All commands are implied stays. You will never tell your dog “down. But get up whenever you want to”). Correct for breaking command with a verbal no and either a leash correction or ecollar correction. Reset the dog back to where they should have been. Reward the dog when they do a good job.
3. Add distractions with you present. Repeat step 2 while having people in the room doing things or other big distractions.
4. Begin leaving sight. Start with just a few seconds. Slowly build to longer. LISTEN for when they get up to mark with a no and correct, walk back in, and reset them where they should be. Mark and reward when you re enter the room if they do well.
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Take your time and have fun!

30/09/2018

Ginger heads home from her off leash board and train today. I’ve had the chance to spend a lot of time with this girl this last week at the training center and couldn’t be more pumped with how she did.
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Here is a quick snippet of a session we did at the park utilizing the basketball court and all the distractions around to proof recalls and down stays. Always push your dog to do better. If they struggle with something don’t avoid it, work through it head on. Only then will you achieve the long lasting success and confidence to take your dog anywhere with you.

30/09/2018

I commonly talk about building relationships from the ground up the appropriate way with dogs. Starting with structure, rules, and leadership first. Ending with love and compassion. Lots of people don’t understand this approach. Some even say it sounds cruel. But let’s break down why this is important
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As humans, we commonly think that if we want a better dog we have to be more loving, kinder, more compassionate. All things we would do if we were trying to build a relationship with another human. The problem is that in the animal world all of those things represent weakness
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Dogs don’t follow unstable leaders. When we are frantic, nervous, or weak, we represent that. In order to build respect and a mutual understanding you have to represent authority and safety. This is what animals follow
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Though this can be a tricky concept to grasp, it is the single most important part about being a dog owner and training your dog. In order to reverse those weak associations your dog may have with you, you have to put in work. And that work starts with working on yourself. Asses your personal separation anxiety you may have to your dog. Asses the personal needs and expectations you have from your dog. Continue improving on those and mentally preparing yourself to be the person your dog needs you to be.

29/09/2018

Extreme leash reactivity pt2.
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So I posted this first clip the other day from an assessment I did with an out of control pittie that came in with his owner looking for help. We did a basic 30 minute consultation to assess the severity of the case and to come up with a treatment plan to work through these issues. Today was our official first session!!
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I’ve talked about it before but it is INCREDIBLY common that when we get dogs in that are as extreme as this dude we see equally extreme opposite responses out of the dog when we begin working on these issues. Dogs like this guy are DYING for us to give them information. The mental pressure of feeling like they are on their own in all of this is what puts them into this frantic state to begin with. Hen we first chip away at the layers and they can finally feel some relief of not being at a level 100 amped up state of mind they fall drastically back into a submissive and compliant state of mind.
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In these clips you will see exactly that. You will see this dog walking drastically far behind his owner (a completely foreign state of mind for him to be in). You will see him being calm and focused in the presence of other dogs. And you will see an owner who now has the knowledge and a blueprint to begin replicating this at home.
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This was 1.5 hours of training total so far. Looks like we’re off to a great start :)

David Tirpak

08/04/2020

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