Questions I get asked
The 43 that come up on nearly every call, answered straight.
Getting started
What happens between the phone call and the first session.
- How do I get started?
- Call me. We talk about what your dog is doing and what you want to change, and I will tell you which program fits or whether you need one at all. If the behavior is serious or the living situation is unusual, I will want to come and see it. An evaluation is $100, it happens in your home, and it rolls into your training fee if you go ahead, with no obligation to go ahead.
- What actually happens at an evaluation?
- I watch your dog being ordinary rather than performing: how he meets me at the door, whether he settles once I sit down, where he goes when nobody is looking at him. Then I ask you to show me the problem rather than describe it, because descriptions get filtered in good faith. Then we look at the rooms, the doors, and the first part of your usual walk. At the end I tell you what I think it is, what order to work on it in, and what should have changed within two weeks, so you can judge early whether it is working.
- Should I tire my dog out before you arrive?
- Please do not. It is a kind instinct and it hides the thing I came to see. I need the dog you actually live with, not a tired version of him.
- Who should be there?
- Everyone who feeds him, walks him or lets him out. It is the single biggest factor in whether a plan survives past week two. A household where one person was taught and the others were told about it afterwards tends to produce a dog who behaves differently depending on who is in the room.
- Is there anything useful I can do before the first session?
- Yes, and it costs nothing. Write down three days of the problem: the time, the place, what happened immediately before, and what you did. The pattern is usually visible by day three, and it turns a vague description into something I can work from straight away.
- How quickly will I see results?
- It depends on the dog, the age, the history, and how consistent the household can be. In a household that stays consistent, you should see real movement on the first behavior within two to three weeks. If nothing has shifted by then, something in the plan is wrong and I would rather say so than wait it out. I will not give you a fixed timeline before I have met your dog.
The programs, and what is in them
There are two layers here, and for a long time no page said so plainly.
- What is the difference between the programs and the specialties?
- Programs are what you buy: In-Home Private Lessons, Kick Start, Board and Train, and Puppy Training. They decide where and how the training happens. Specialties are what you are trying to solve: aggression, leash reactivity, resource guarding, anxiety, socialization, e-collar work. With the exception of puppy training, a specialty is delivered through a program rather than bought on its own.
- What do In-Home Private Lessons include?
- From $700: an evaluation plus four one-hour sessions, spaced roughly every two weeks across two months, with lifetime trainer support after the face-to-face work finishes. It suits households who can put the daily practice in themselves and want to be shown how.
- What is Kick Start?
- My own program, and the name explains nothing, so here it is. Kick Start I is $1,600: a trainer comes to your home five days running for a one-hour session each day, working in your house, your neighborhood and local parks. On the sixth day the owner gets a lesson on the behaviors they want addressed, and a two-week follow-up lesson comes after that. All training equipment is included. Kick Start II is $700 and continues it with more distraction, more distance and more duration. There is a third step for off-leash freedom, and the Kick Start page carries the current details.
- What does Board and Train include?
- Two weeks on-leash is $3,600 and three weeks on-and-off-leash is $4,800, with all equipment included and owner handover lessons at the end. There is also an a la carte arrangement at $175 per hour plus $60 per day boarding. Dogs stay up to three weeks.
- Is there a payment plan?
- Yes, on In-Home Private Lessons and on Board and Train. Ask me on the call and we will work out what suits.
- What is your refund policy?
- All services provided are non-refundable. It is in the footer of every page and on the terms page rather than buried, because it is a commercial term and you should know it before you commit rather than afterwards.
- Which program should I pick?
- That is what the evaluation is for, and I would rather look at the dog than guess. As a rough guide: private lessons if you have the time and want to learn to do it yourself, Kick Start if you want intensity without the dog leaving home, and board and train if the behavior needs daily consistency your household realistically cannot give.
Board and train
The questions worth asking before a dog goes anywhere to stay.
- Where does my dog actually stay?
- In my home. Not a kennel, not a run, not a facility. A dog can look flawless in a kennel and fall apart in a living room, so the training happens in the kind of environment it has to work in.
- Is board and train worth it?
- It is worth it when a behavior needs daily consistency your household cannot realistically provide, or when you want significant progress in a short window. It is not worth it if nobody at home intends to keep the work going, which is exactly why the handover lessons at the end matter as much as the boarding weeks.
- What is the best age for board and train?
- Usually around six months and up, once a dog has the focus for structured work. Younger puppies generally get more out of puppy training and proper socialization first.
- My town is not in the board and train range. Why not?
- Board and train draws from a tighter ring, roughly an hour's drive of Baltimore, because a dog staying with me means the household needs to be reachable. The overall service area is the wider one, about two hours, because in-home lessons mean I do the driving. Everything except a residential stay is available across the whole two hour area.
- What should I ask any trainer, including me?
- Where the dogs are actually housed, and how many are there at once. What the fee includes and what it does not. How long the stay is and what happens if it needs to be longer. What the vaccination requirements are. What the procedure is if your dog needs a vet while he is away. How often you will hear from them. What the cancellation terms are. Whether they carry business cover. Those are all fair questions and any trainer worth using will answer them plainly. Ask me any of them and if I do not have the answer to hand I will find out rather than improvise one.
Methods and equipment
What I use, what I do not, and why.
- What is your approach?
- Clear rules, consistent household routines, and structure before obedience. Most of what I fix is not a missing command, it is a household arrangement that has quietly taught the dog something nobody meant to teach him. I build the structure first because the obedience holds far better on top of it.
- Do you use food?
- Yes, and it is a wage rather than a bribe. Food shown before the behavior becomes part of the cue, which is why so many dogs only work when there is something in your hand. Food produced after the behavior pays for work done. The same treat is one or the other depending entirely on when it appears.
- Do you use e-collars?
- I do, for specific jobs, mainly a recall that has to hold at real distance where a voice will not carry. It is a way to reach a dog at range, introduced gradually at a level the dog barely notices, rather than a way to punish him. I am a listed E-Collar Technologies dealer and trainer. If you would rather not use one, say so and we build the recall on a long line instead, which takes longer and works.
- What equipment do I need to buy?
- Less than you think, and get it right rather than expensive. A properly fitted collar or harness and a fixed length leash. Not a retractable one, which makes pulling worse and costs more than the thing that works. Check the fit at two fingers, and on a narrow headed dog make sure the collar cannot come over the ears. Training equipment is included in Kick Start and in Board and Train.
- Do you run group classes?
- No. I work in your home, or the dog comes to stay with me. A class is a room full of dogs at fixed distances you do not control, which suits a sociable dog and is the wrong environment for most of the dogs I am called about.
- How long have you been doing this?
- Dog training since 2001. I am affiliated with the International Association of Canine Professionals, the Federation Mondiale Bergers Belges and the American Working Dog Federation, a member of the American Working Malinois Association, and a listed E-Collar Technologies dealer and trainer.
Puppies
When to start, and why the first few months count for so much.
- When should training start?
- As early as eight weeks, which is when the American Kennel Club says simple training can begin, and everything you put in before six months costs a fraction of what the same behavior costs to fix at three years. The recall you can build at four months is close to free, because a young puppy wants to be near you anyway. That window is worth using.
- Should I wait until the vaccinations are finished?
- That is a conversation for your vet, and worth having early rather than defaulting to waiting. Socialization is not the same as putting a puppy on the ground in a park: carrying him, sitting with him somewhere interesting, and letting him watch the world from your arms all count, and none of that has to wait.
- What does socialization actually mean?
- Calm, controlled, positive exposure, in small amounts, ending before the puppy is overwhelmed. It does not mean meeting forty strangers in a busy lobby, which is not socialization, it is being overwhelmed, and a nervous adult is a common result. Quality beats quantity every time.
- What is the 3-3-3 rule?
- A rough guide for a newly adopted dog settling in: about three days to decompress, three weeks to start learning the routine, and three months to feel genuinely at home. It is a useful expectation-setter rather than a law. Some dogs move faster, worried dogs often move slower, and none of it replaces actually training the dog.
- What is the 7-7-7 rule?
- A socialization guideline: expose a puppy to seven new surfaces, seven new objects, seven new locations, seven new people and so on, early in life. The counting matters far less than the principle, which is broad, positive, controlled exposure while the window is open.
- Is a crate cruel?
- A den the dog chooses is not, and most dogs choose it within a fortnight of being introduced properly, with the door off and every meal fed inside. What is unkind is shutting a dog in one for a full working day, using it as a punishment, or forcing a frightened dog in and closing the door. Those are misuses of a good tool and they are why it has the reputation it has.
- My puppy was perfect and has become impossible at ten months.
- That is adolescence, and it is the most common call I take about young dogs. Nothing has gone wrong with your dog or with what you did. The hormones and the brain are both changing, and a lot of previously reliable behavior gets tested. It is also the best time to work, because none of the new habits have set yet.
Behavior problems
The ones that make a dog exhausting to live with, and what is realistic.
- Can aggression be fixed?
- Aggression can very often be changed, managed and made safe to live with. Whether it disappears completely depends on the cause, the history and the household. I will tell you honestly what I think is achievable with your dog rather than promise you an outcome, and where I think a case needs veterinary behavior input alongside training, I will say so.
- What is the difference between reactivity and aggression?
- A great deal of what gets called aggression on a leash is frustration and the inability to move away, and it improves with distance work rather than with anything dramatic. Genuine intent to do damage is a different piece of work with a different plan. Telling those apart is one of the main things an evaluation is for, and not something I will do from a description over the phone.
- He growled at someone. Should I punish that?
- No. A growl is information and it is worth being grateful for. The dog to worry about is the one who has stopped giving it, because he has learned that warning does not work and the next step up the ladder is the one that does. Punishing a growl removes the warning and leaves the feeling underneath it exactly where it was.
- My dog barks at the window all day.
- He is practicing, and every bark appears to work, because whatever he barked at was leaving anyway. Nothing you teach can out-pace that many repetitions, so the first move is to remove the view for a fortnight and then teach a settle away from the glass. Management and training together, in that order.
- He is destructive when we are out.
- The first question is whether it is boredom or genuine distress, because they look similar and need different work. Destruction focused on doors and windows, vocalizing that starts within minutes and does not stop, house soiling from an otherwise clean dog, or self-injury all point to separation distress rather than mischief. That is a longer road and it does not respond to more exercise.
- When should I see a vet instead of a trainer?
- Any time a behavior is genuinely new, and especially in a dog over about eight. A dog who has started snapping when touched may be sore. One ignoring a recall he has known for years may not be hearing it. One toileting indoors after years of nothing is usually telling you about his body rather than his manners. Pain and illness change behavior, and training through them does harm rather than nothing.
- Will a second dog help?
- Rarely for the reason people hope. A dog distressed by a person leaving is distressed about the person, and another dog does not substitute. It sometimes helps a bored dog, it always doubles the training, and it adds a third job which is the relationship between them. Worth a conversation before rather than after.
Where I work, and how far
Two different distances, and they run the opposite way round from the obvious guess.
- How far do you travel?
- The service area is about a two hour drive from the Baltimore, MD area, and there is a page for every town in it. In-home lessons and Kick Start reach all of it. Board and train draws from the tighter one hour ring instead.
- Is there a travel charge?
- No. The published prices are the prices anywhere inside the service area, and the evaluation is $100 wherever you are. What the distance does mean is that a visit is worth planning, so it is better spent on diagnosis and the harder problems than on something a phone call could settle.
- Do you cover my town?
- The service areas page lists every town I work in, grouped by county. If yours is not on it, call and ask rather than assuming: the list is the towns with a page written, not the limit of where I will drive.
- What are your hours?
- 6 AM - 7 PM, 7 days a week. Calls and sessions both.
Safety
One question that is not a training question at all.
- What if my dog eats something poisonous?
- Get professional medical help immediately. Call your veterinarian, or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435. Do not try to make your dog vomit unless a professional tells you to. This is a veterinary emergency, not something to look up or wait on.
Question not answered here?
Ask me directly. A five minute call usually settles it, and if I do not have the answer to hand I will find out rather than improvise one.