DOG OWNER: I want to enroll my dog but I don’t know when is the best time enroll or what’s the best package to choose from.
These are the 2 biggest questions we get before a new dog owner signs up for one of our packages.
Let’s answer, when is the best time to enroll your dog. The best time to enroll your dog is now. The best age to enroll your dog, if you have that ability, because you’re a planner and your dog is actually part of your family that co-exists with you.
For our Board and Train Packages, that ideal age is 4 or 5 months. As long as they are current on all their vaccinations. Here’s why…
That early age is the ideal age where most dog owners have not unintentionally or intentionally screwed up their own dog. The older a dog gets, the more correction they usually need because they are less willing to trust the teaching process we do. Which in turn, helps avoid those correction opportunities. By the time a dog is 1 or 2 years old, the dog owner has created several issues in a dog that they normally would NOT have had if we got them as a puppy.
Some of those issues include, high anxiety. Dogs with high anxiety are almost always attributed to either the people they are surrounded with or the environment they grew up in. So if you are a dog owner who spoils, pampers, lets the puppy figure out the world for themselves, and/or does all these extra life style benefits for your dog WITHOUT providing proper structure first. Then your dog is a big bag of nerves and you know exactly what we are talking about. Your dog freaks out when you’re not close by. They are like velcro if they are not next to you. They constantly seem to shake. They hide in whatever corner or area that they feel safe in. They freak out and start whining or howling when they are alone or in a new area. They lost all their confidence in being a great majestic dog. And all the dog trainers you took them to before us had very limited results or they made them worse before we ended up getting them. Unfortunately, this also applies to all the amazing dog owners who rescued a dog from a shelter and that dog lived there for some time. This group is our second biggest client group. Amazing dog owners trying to help their new shelter dog have a much better life but that shelter dog came with a lot of pre-existing baggage.
We do amazing work but we are always so grateful when those select potential clients who were expecting miracles for their crazy dog to be the poster child of obedient dogs, don’t sign up. Dogs have personalities of their own and while we do make dogs amazing. We are also limited by what the dog can naturally do. So the road can be longer and more challenging for select dogs and dog owners.
It’s rare when we have gotten a puppy who was spoiled so much during its infancy stage that it made the puppy very fearful being in a new environment. To the point where the dog didn’t act like a normal puppy with normal puppy issues. We get it, we want to spoil and treat our new puppies or dogs we have as much as possible. However, if you over saturate the giving without proper structure and foundation, you are emotionally damaging your new puppy or dog. That’s why they end up like a bag of nerves. It’s always the owner or the environment but we live in era where dog owners don’t like to take responsibility for the part they played. And it’s easier to get rid of that puppy or dog and start all over again. Shelters are not full because of over breeding. It’s us as humans. Look at how many dogs are dumped in the wild or “accidently” lost. This doesn’t apply to most but there are a lot of people who end up with a new puppy shortly after this. The ones who get mad at these statements, are the same ones most likely to fit this description.
Other issues dog owners create is fear. Something happened because you have an untrained dog that created a negative event with a door, a car ride, an encounter with another dog, an unexpected person intruding to pet your dog, a loud noise they have never heard before, and the list goes on but they all have the same thing in common. You created a fear based event for your dog and it wasn’t fixed. When we get them as puppies, most of those events usually haven’t occurred. And if they have, it’s easier for us to fix because it’s not ingrained yet. We also get it! We experience those same issues while we are training your puppies. We just have a better opportunity of training your puppy with a lesser amount of correction because they don’t have all that additional baggage that older dogs carry. Are there situations where we still have to correct your puppy, yes of course. This isn’t a make believe world but it also gives us the opportunity to introduce them into harder environments with positive mental connections. So we usually end up needing to correct less.
That’s why our dogs are mostly seen on our finished videos with tails wagging and excitement. Not head down, stoic, and going through the motions. People have replicated our work but they haven’t been able to replicate our happy dog results consistently. We don’t just train. We teach. Teaching comes first. Then we train.
There is also the aggressive dog baggage or resource guarding we have fixed over the years. We actually get it. We are a little higher price than others. So you have taken your dog to lower cost places thinking dog training is all the same. In my early 20’s, I thought the exact same thing. You take your dog to another place and pay less. You may get the positive results you hoped for, which is great. There are some great trainers locally and further out, but the behavioral modification we do is not the same. And this is the number one reason why we end up fixing these aggressive dogs. Our work is not demanding of your time to be a part-time dog trainer after work with food regulation and dog practice exercises that make you feel like you’re working a second job with no pay. Our results allow you to take your dog with you on the go and enjoy life while reinforcing what they already know. Don’t believe us, watch our videos. We show our work. Other places tell you in person and you can’t visually see their extensive work anywhere except for the dogs they have on hand.
Where not saying that this is for every place because there are some pretty good dog trainers out there who are now showing their work as much as possible. We are referring to the dog trainers who cherry pick which dogs and videos they show the world. Working within your budget is great, just be smart about how you pick your dog trainer for the needs you are wanting for the rest of your dog’s life. And yours. Spending more now to have less issues later is a huge life benefit in itself. It’s the same concept of spending more money on a quality mattress so you have a better quality life. You spend 33% of your life in bed. It only makes sense to get the best mattress you can afford for the best quality life.
Dog anxiety, dog fear, dog aggression, and dog hyperness are the most well known issues we encounter. We could explain further about having a high energy hyper dog but we know our dog owners universally understand this one. There’s no need to expand on it any further. And yes there are so many more issues we have taken care of over the years, but we wanted to cover the biggest topics here. Starting your dog as soon as you can at 4 or 5 months is ideal. If your dog really is part of your family life, we know our prices don’t really matter because you understand your investment is for your lifetime. Not just for today, this month, or this year.
As for which package to get. We will cover that in another blog post.
