Welcome to Engaging the Dog’s Mind Dog Training! I am a successful competitive obedience dog trainer with accomplishments including winning the 2025 Rally National Championship, earning over 60 high combined award and over 60 triple high combined awards in AKC rally obedience, dozens of High in Trail Awards and High Combined Awards in regular obedience including a high combined at the 2022 Southeastern Regional Championship. I’ve earned 2 OTCH’s, 6 RACH’s, 2 UDX’s, 4 UD’s, and other various titles on over a dozen different dogs.
My training philosophy is built on the following foundational beliefs which are further elaborated in my book entitled Engaging the Dog’s Mind.
- The most effective and efficient training comes from breaking behaviors down into their simplest, most trainable pieces. These pieces should be individually well-trained before the pieces are put back together and the puppy or dog is expected to perform the behavior as a whole. This practice creates clarity, understanding, and solid learning.
- It is more important to build internal qualities than to have instant outward behavioral changes.
- Transfer of focus from food to the work should occur as soon as possible. We begin this work in our very first training session.
- Positive reinforcement works best when you use training tools that encourage work focus instead of food or toy focus. These work-focused tools include marker training and shaping. We will be talking extensively about these tools throughout this book.
- Luring and other food focused techniques should be used minimally. When these techniques are used, they should be faded as quickly as possible.
- When lack of motivation is the problem, we don’t see it as the dog’s fault. Instead, we see it as an indication of something lacking in our training. We’ll change the training to better motivate the puppy to want to work instead of making him work out of fear of a correction.
- Both the puppy’s body and his mind need training.
- We believe that training should be structured and science-based while at the same time being game-based and fun.
- Dogs and puppies should be set up for success.
- A strong foundation is the key to success even at the highest levels of training. Our program spends considerably more time building a solid foundation of the basics before we begin building on that foundation. Initial results may appear slow, but once the foundation is solidly built, the progress is exponential.
See my new book entitled Engaging the Dog’s Mind to learn more about engaging your own dog’s mind. This link will take you to a page where you can read the book free of charge. There are also videos of me training six to nine week old puppies using the principles taught in the book.
See my “about me” page for a more detailed list of my accomplishments.
If interested in training with me, see my “what I offer” page.
If interested in training your dog to be a well-mannered pet, see my daughter’s website: www.gobeyondbehavior.com. Jenna is an incredible trainer that I often consult with when training my own dogs!