Mission Pawsitive Dog Training

11/12/2022

Not sure how it happened, but Aspen turned 2 this week! 🥳

17/06/2022

Celebrating 10k followers on Instagram by giving away 10lbs of Raw dog food from Darwin’s Natural Pet Products and free online training!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ce5EOQOjsJ9/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Animal Island • Gimme That Sunshine

30/05/2022

How to teach you dog to like going in their playpen (or crate) and hanging out in there:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CYx2bKHpzF4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Melissa Goodman | Dog Trainer () added a video to their Instagram account: “✨Teaching your puppy/dog to like their pen✨ This can also apply to a crate! It’s really important…”

26/05/2022

A safe alternative to the dog park that is much more fun!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CY8L1uXp56j/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Queen • Don't Stop Me Now

27/12/2021

✨REAR END AWARENESS✨ One of my favorite skills to teach dogs is rear end awareness. It’s a foundation skill for a lot of advanced tricks, it is really good for a dog’s physical development (hips!) and helps a lot with loose leash walking. This is an example of what more formal loose leash walking looks like- I do not make Aspen’s entire walks look like this. That would be boring and I want her to be a dog (sniff, explore). The practical use for this skill is when I need her to be close to me either for her safety or for navigating through crowded areas. However, Aspen doesn’t mind walking like this because to her it’s just another trick that pays well. The last clips is from when she was a puppy and I was teaching her how to pivot on a target, which is the foundation behavior for this and for other cool tricks we have been working on!😁

18/12/2021

Have you heard of a Biewer Terrier? They are a very rare breed that has just been recognized by the AKC and was in the National Dog Show for the 1st time this year. They were first bred in Germany in the 1980’s as tricolor Yorkies and they are now its own recognized breed. This is Jasper, he’s 4 months old and he is a spunky, smart little guy who I’m excited to be working with!

15/12/2021

ALL HAIL MOTHER NATURE’S ORIGINAL SUPERFOOD FOR DOGS🐶, THE ALMIGHTY EGG🥚 AKA NATURE’S MULTIVITAMIN!

When sourcing the perfect longevity snack for your dog, the humble egg🥚 should be at the top of your list! If there was such a thing as a perfect food for pets, it would be eggs. They are rich in bioavailable amino acids, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals while being relatively low in calories and carbs. Whether from chicken🐔, quail, or ducks🦆, eggs are nature’s nutrition bombs!

Eggs🥚 contain all ten essential amino acids needed to support effective muscle growth, recovery and maintenance. Eggs are also rich in choline, a nutrient crucial to the production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain, which aids brain function, memory, and may help treat & even prevent “doggy dementia”.🧠

Lastly, research shows as many as 60% of dogs have signs of arthritis🦴, on x-rays, and one veterinary study found dogs who consumed egg shell membrane had significantly less joint pain, so start feeding your pets more eggs as treats!

What’s the best way to feed an egg?🍳

The fastest method, obviously, is to offer them raw… this is how animals have been eating eggs for millennia. However, according to science, lightly cooking the egg protein (called avidin) makes the B vitamin biotin easier to absorb but if you opt to cook you eggs, remember to not overcook them! Logically, applying too much heat to good food is a naturally destructive process. The chemistry of heating foods looks a lot like unwinding molecules, for better or for worse. Heating egg whites is generally beneficial, however, the yolks would do better with less heat, because heat damages fats and vital nutrients inside.

Soft boiled is the ultimate way to cook an egg🥚 (this is when you boil an egg, but it’s still a little runny and the yolk is definitely not hard) because the fats and nutrients in the yolk essentially have three protective layers from oxidation – the water, eggshell, and egg white. This way, all of the good stuff in the egg yolk is maximally preserved while the whites are cooked enough for best protein utilization and removal of avidin.

Instructions for soft boiling:
Fill a medium pot with water and heat to a gentle simmer, just below boiling. Using a slotted spoon, carefully lower the eggs into the water and let simmer for 7 minutes (6 minutes for a runnier egg).

When choosing eggs, go for pastured, free-range eggs to get the most nutrients. One egg is about seventy calories. My 30lb dog Shubie gets an egg on her meal several times a week.

In our new book, The Forever Dog, we list over 40 of our favorite longevity foods you add to your pup’s bowl, backed by the most surprising new science as to why they’re so amazing at building health and longevity! We also show you how to add them in a way that keeps your pup’s nutrition in balance.

You’ll want to check out the section called: “Core Longevity Toppers: Superfoods You Can Share with Your Dog on a Daily Basis.” We’ve also included handy charts on which foods are best at building your dog’s microbiome🦠, powerful polyphenol-rich foods🫐, as well as a long list of fast-n-fresh training treats, if you’re on the go. The Forever Dog book is now available for order worldwide! https://www.foreverdogextras.com/pet-longevity

08/12/2021

WHAT IF YOUR DOG COULD LIVE TO BE 27!? ❤️🐾

Sadly, only one out of a thousand dogs lives up to 21-25 years. The vast majority of dogs die younger from various diseases, many of which are outcomes of lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise. So when we set out to write The Forever Dog book, we wanted to know, “what do these long-lived dogs have in common?” 🐶🤔

One of the dogs we came across was Buksi, a 27-year old mixed-breed in Hungary!! Dr. Eniko Kubinyi, the head researcher of the Methuselah dog study, told us Buksi lived on a horse riding farm🐎 and led a “free life”, able to make choices based on preferences and wasn’t constantly restrained in his movement. Like many other long-lived dogs we came across, he consumed raw unprocessed foods, spent a great deal of time outdoors, and also had a rich social life - having daily contact with new people👧🏻👨🏼‍🦳👩🏼, horses🐴, as well as other dogs🐕.

Diet, exercise, stress and environmental factors all play a role in our pet's wellbeing and potentially lifespan.🧬 What are some of the changes you’ve made in your pet’s life after reading The Forever Dog? We’d love to hear your comments and takeaways below! 💬👇

You can read more about these long-lived dogs and our suggestions for what you can do to help maximize your dog’s health in our new book: ForeverDog.com

08/12/2021

I cannot believe Aspen is 1 yrs old today! 🥳🎂 she is growing up so fast and I’m so blessed to be her mom. And happy birthday to all 8 of her siblings .aussie .barker Otis Boujee

04/12/2021

An important thing to socialize your dog to: big, loud machinery like construction equipment. And not just expose them to it, but make it very positive for them. Construction equipment can be very scary to dogs and you never know when you may run into some or if you need to have work done to your own home involving big, loud machinery like this. One skill I love to build with dogs is toy play like tug out in public. It’s pretty difficult to be scared/stressed and play with a toy! Plus it’s a great way to keep your dog engaged with with around distractions. Outside of Oliver’s condo building was the Amazon guy. He LOVVVEES people, so a big part of good socialization is teaching your dog to ignore other people and not get overly excited. So I rewarded Oliver for just watching him pass, not getting to excited and for choosing to turn away from him and come to me instead.

30/11/2021

I took Aspen on a “Mommy & me” getaway to Spend some quality 1 on 1 time together. My Birthday and Aspen’s birthday are 2 weeks apart (I can’t believe she’s almost 1!) so I wanted to do something nice for us. All we did was eat, go on lots of walks with amazing views/scenery, eat some more, and relax. If you haven’t taken a solo trip with just you and your dog, do it! If you have, where are your favorite places to travel with your dog?

28/11/2021

Look at these two beautifully holding a challenging stay on their spots while I grabbed the Amazon package!
I personally do not use a formal “stay” cue much and I think it’s overused in general with dogs. I use a more a causal stay a lot, which for me is “wait” as in “hold on a second”. However, I like to have the skill for situations like this and it’s great for building impulse control, even if you don’t use the behavior much. Callie (left) has dashed out the door several times and George has also. So teaching them impulse control has been extra important for them. Now, they for the most part naturally stay further back from the door and automatically know to wait when anything centered around the front door is happening.

24/11/2021

What to do when your puppy/dog gets spooked by something! SOUND ON!
Honey suddenly saw a stranger in her yard, holding a bucket full of tools, bent over digging with a shovel. She got spooked and did a lot of alarm barking.
I asked the guy to come back over so I could let Honey check it out. I start by giving her treats as the guy approaches while she watches him. Then I let her approach the bucket ON HER TERMS and reward her for checking it out. Choice is extremely important. I let her back away. She wasn’t scared of the guy (she loves people). It was the combination of the guy + the tools. Puppies also go through fear periods and Honey was in her 1st fear period. And I don’t care in this moment that Honey was jumping, I just wanted her to feel happy about the guy.🙂

20/11/2021

There are so many benefits for teaching a dog how to retrieve! Building toy motivation allows you to have a high value reward that isn’t food related, you can use fetch to mix in play with training to keep it fun, and you can utilize this skill if your dog puts something in their mouth that doesn’t belong to them or isn’t safe. For dogs that like to tug, I use that to teach a retrieve. I make the game more interactive using tug because most dogs don’t actually enjoy you taking a toy out of their mouth and throwing it away from them. And tug is a great way to build engagement between you and your dog and make you more valuable to them. For Oliver, incorporating tug makes a massive difference in how mouthy he gets, how long we can do training and it is a reward he loves! Sometimes he can get overstimulated by too much tug at once so I mix in other behaviors he has learned to teach him to quickly go from super playful to calm and focused. Adding natural pauses in the form of asking for behaviors is really training in the form of play, which is the whole point! And did you notice how calmly I ask Oliver to “drop” the toy? Never a need to sound firm or serious when asking a dog to do something for you!

16/11/2021

Look at this sweet face! When I first met Otis, he barked and growled at me for a good portion of the consultation and I couldn’t touch him for the first 2 sessions. He’s an anxious boy who can have mixed feelings about people he doesn’t so it took time for us to build a bond. What helped us become besties was I put zero pressure on him to interact with me. Here are 3 common myths about greeting dogs:
1) putting your hand out towards them to let them sniff you.
Dogs can smell you just fine from far away without you sticking your hand in their face invading their personal space. I never pet any dog (even super social dogs) unless they make it obvious they want me to pet them. When people pet dogs, they are usually thinking about satisfying themselves, not the dog. So always keep that in mind!
2) handing the dog treats to show them you are safe/not threatening.
Doing this can push a dog past what they are comfortable with just to get the treat can backfire because once they eat the treat, they can have an “oh crap!”moment when they realize they’re too close. It can become a fight vs. flight situation and that can lead to a bite/lunge/growl and/or increase stress around people instead of teach them to like people. What I did with Otis is this: while talking with his humans, I ignored him while repeatedly tossing him treats AWAY from me so he didn’t feel like he had to get close to me to learn that I only deliver great things. This helped him feel like he could check me out knowing I was respecting his space.
3) A dog approaching you to sniff you means they want you to pet them.
NOOO! Dogs investigate by scent, whereas we are visual creatures. We assess situations to see if they are safe with their eyes. Sometimes when dogs smell us, they are just checking us out, they do not always want to be pet, and petting them in this situation can also lead to a bite/lunge, etc. because they were not expecting/wanting a human to pet them.
*Consent isn’t just for people!*

13/11/2021

I’m lucky to have a very dog friendly chiropractic office, so I bring Aspen with me to my appointments and have brought her with me almost every week since I first brought her home at 8 weeks old. quickly became one of her places to visit as you can hear with her whining and grunting! Because Aspen gets really excited when we get there and when she sees everybody, I focus on impulse control for this situation. When going into a building where we may encounter people who don’t want a dog to get in their space, I use her “wait” cue for doorways and getting in/out of elevators so she doesn’t surprise anyone. If there is anyone coming, I want to make sure I am able to keep Aspen out of their way and allow them to go first. “Wait” isn’t just handy for that, but also for safety. A very versatile skill to teach your dog! Once we get into the office, She knows to go into her crate (which I bring) during my appointment and settle. This is an example of how useful it is to have a crate trained dog that can be calm in the crate anywhere you go. The last part is Aspen holding a stay while she watches us getting adjusted. She is fascinated by the cracking sounds!

09/11/2021

One of the main things I have been focusing on with Oliver is impulse control. He is incredibly smart, but he naturally gets easily frustrated if he can’t figure out how to do something or he doesn’t get what he wants fast enough. Puppies naturally do not have much patience, and this is a simple exercise to build his frustration tolerance, aka patience! He has to wait for me to lower the treat all the way to the floor without going for it before I give it to him. If he goes for it, I just lift it back up. I don’t tell him anything (unless he gets it right) so he has to figure it out himself. As you can see, he gets frustrated because it’s not easy! After him having this moment of frustration, I grabbed his rope to play a little tug to give him a break and get rid of the frustration. Then I made it easier until I could eventually lower the treat all the way to the floor. This was about 5 minutes of training.

06/11/2021

Look at Honey & her mom killing it at her 1st time at a shopping mall! We worked on her loose leash walking, engagement and of course SOCIALIZATION! Going through/over obstacles and walking on different surfaces is an important part of socialization that many don’t know about! We saw all kinds of delivery workers pushing things on noisy carts, kids, random people, loud trucks, and more. Honey isn’t just learning that seeing people are a good thing, but that is is also a good thing to ignore/be neutral to people. Part of being a well socialized dog is being able to ignore people and other dogs, not wanting to say “hi” to everyone. Even more important for Honey since the long term goal for her is to become a therapy dog.

03/11/2021

This little man is Oliver, an 11 week old Lab pup- he’s one of my new Platinum pups which means we will be working hard for the next few weeks to lay down a solid foundation. We’ll be covering all the basics with a strong emphasis on Impulse control. As cute as he is, Oliver gets frustrated and overstimulated very easily and expresses that using his mouth, which is frustrating for his humans. For dogs that get frustrated, doing lots of simple impulse control exercises to teach them patience in a fun way and teaching him alternative behaviors to do instead that will get him what he wants, is the way to help with that.

01/11/2021

Halloween and the 4th of July are not the best holidays for dogs! People in costumes can be really scary! Aspen’s first experience with a child at 9 weeks old was a bad one (little boy screamed in her face and ran away) and caused her to be apprehensive around kids for a few weeks so I socialized the hell out of her with kids since then. Now she loveeess them & you can see how wiggly she is trying to hold a sit while kids walk past us in the last clip. All that has prepared her beautifully for the trick or treating event at our local outdoor mall. There were little kids dressed in costumes EVERYWHERE. Plus many were running around, very loud, and a few kids under the age of 5 pet her (in a toddler kind of way) unexpectedly. I knew she would do well, but I always come very prepared with treats to reward her for what’s happening around us and working our loose leash walking through big crowds. She did great not jumping on any kids, focusing on me and no face plants into any kids’ candy! Remember that socialization is continuous no matter how old or young your dog is!

31/10/2021

“Are you sad?” Part 2! This is how I taught Aspen how to do this trick and I taught this to her when she was 5 months old. The last two clips are from this past week to show the final trick. This one seems kind of boring because there is zero guiding involved. All I’m doing is staring at Aspen and marking (clicking) then rewarding her for any lowering of her head and put the treat in between her paws. This process is called free shaping- breaking up a behavior into tiny steps and rewarding those small steps until you eventually get the full behavior. Could you lure this? Yes, but this way of learning requires a lot of thinking and patience from the dog because they are figuring it out entirely on their own. It teaches them to think in a different, more advanced way. The marker (clicker or “yes!”) is super important information for the dog to know they are on the right track!

27/10/2021

“Are you sad?” has become one of my favorite tricks to teach! I use a process called free shaping which requires a lot more thinking and patience from the dog. Plus, it’s cute! Should I post a part 2 video showing how I train this from the beginning?

25/10/2021

I make it known how particular I am when it comes to what we feed our dogs. Since good training involves lots of treats, it’s important not to fill your dog up with junk. It is also important to give dogs appropriate outlets to chew on to prevent unwanted use of their mouth, drain excess energy, naturally reduces stress and chewing is calming. These are Aspen’s favorites from . Their freeze dried training treats are only 1-3 ingredients and the perfect size for training sessions. Their yak chews last Aspen hours over several days, it takes aspens a few hours (over a few days) to get the marrow out and chews on them for weeks! Her absolute favorite are the Turbo tendons. I give Aspen chew time to relax at the end of the day, when I leave her home alone, when I travel, and when I need her to be calm in public places like restaurants. If you use my code “pawsitive10”(expires 11/5), you can get an additional 10% off ANY Pupford product through Pupford.com

21/10/2021

How does your dog feel about Trash trucks? They can be very scary! They are big, loud and have a giant robotic arms that makes trash cans, another scary thing go flying in the air! I heard it coming so I quick ran Georgi back to her driveway where I could put a lot of distance between us and the truck so she would become overwhelmed. I also used the car in the driveway to partially block her view so she didn’t see the part of the trash can being lifted. Georgi is fearful and anxious with these types of things, so I wanted to help her have success with this experience. If your dog is worried about something, you need to make it rain treats to pair something scary or even just potentially scary, with something amazing! No, the treats don’t “distract”, they are helping her form a positive association. Even if your dog isn’t scared or something or you think they won’t be, still pair it with food to make sure it stays that way! This is all part of important socialization for a young dog.

16/10/2021

Puppy’s 1st public outing! Here is Honey on her first big adventure to . It was extremely busy and she handled everything like a champ! We had her in the cart at first so she could get the lay of the land and help her feel safer in case the crowd was too much. It is CRUCIAL to get your puppy out into the world before 16 weeks old (specifically between 8-12 weeks old) which is their primary socialization window- puppies are the most accepting of new experiences at this age and will recover quicker when startled at this age. Plus they will be able to handle stress and new experiences better than dogs who did not get out in the world very young. If your dog didn’t, you aren’t doomed, you may just have to go slower and start smaller. This is what Honey saw, heard, experienced:
Power tools, forklift, sopping carts, loud metal carts, tons of people, people on ladders, slick concrete floors, large objects being moved, spooky Halloween decorations, and more! And everything was paired with high value food to form positive associations.

14/10/2021

Here is a little compilation of what Honey learned in her first 2 days of day training! Not bad for being under 3 months old!We are covering all the basics and skills she will need to eventually pass a therapy dog test one day. I use the balance disk to get her comfortable with an unsteady surface that is textured, and it teaches her balance. I will also be using the balance disk to teach her rear end awareness for her physical development to strengthen her hips and her coordination. The most important part is she is having fun!

11/10/2021

Tell me your heart doesn’t melt the second you see this adorable puppy!😍 This is Honey and she is hard at work with my Platinum package (3 weeks of comprehensive Day Training) to get her (and her humans)off to a really solid start! Her mom has goals for Honey to eventually be a therapy so I am going to be putting an extra emphasis on confidence building, body handling, and socialization on top of teaching her all the important manners/life skills for thriving in our world. You’ll be seeing quite a bit of her!😁💗

09/10/2021

Socialization has been a priority with Georgi because she is fearful when out of the house. In the 1st clip, she was very nervous on her first time out with me and would become shutdown by a car moving down the street or someone getting their mail. She is coming a long way and did really well with some scary things today! There were 3 gardeners- one with the blower, one raking leaves and another holding a trash bin over his his head. Unfortunately most vets advise to not take puppies out until they have completed all vaccinations which is outdated and can be detrimental to their development, leading to fear based issues. Even though Georgi didn’t get early positive exposure to the world, she is still young (5 months old now) and making progress every day. I have a lot of socialization video- should I post more of these moments?