Freedom Harness Exchange @ Pits on the Plaza!

October is National Pit Bull Awareness Month, designated as such to highlight the positive stories, sweet faces, and sloppy kisses of this well-loved (but often misunderstood) demographic of the dog world.  To celebrate this occasion, and to raise awareness and camaraderie for pit bulls in the Northern Colorado area, Humane Society of Weld County volunteer Jordan Flagg is organizing Pits on the Plaza, to be held on October 22nd at Centerra in Loveland.  This event will feature training demos, fall fun for the pups like bobbing for hot dogs, and various vendors and educational displays.     

Carmelo is a natural model!  He has his own Instagram page (check it out here) and he's available for adoption through the Humane Society of Weld County!

One of the ways that Summit Dog Training is contributing to this event is through a Freedom Harness Exchange, where dog owners can surrender their prong, choke or electronic collars in exchange for a brand new Freedom No-Pull Harness. We believe that all dogs deserve a chance to walk without the threat of pain, regardless of breed, size, temperament, and past history.  At this event celebrating pit bulls, we are excited about the opportunity to get a positive, effective training tool like the Freedom Harness into the paws of the dogs who need it the most. 

Why Not Use Prong/Choke/Electronic Collars?

Although these tools might seem like a “quick fix” for some of your dog’s leash behavior issues, there are many reasons to find a different training alternative:

·      A dog walking “nicely” on an aversive training tool is only doing so to avoid punishment and pain, not because it is learning what you WANT it to do on a leash.  When you take this aversive tool away, the underlying behavior will still be an issue.

·      When your dog gets excited and pulls towards normal stimuli in your environment (think stranger, children, other dogs, skateboards, etc.) and then experiences pain, this can contribute to an association between that trigger and pain and build up a negative Conditioned Emotional Response to the trigger, potentially turning excitement into reactivity. 

·      Even when used “correctly,” prong and choke collars can cause physical damage to your dog, not just to their neck and skin, but also, less obviously, to their thyroid gland, trachea, eyes, and spinal cord.

·      There is no scientific research to support the claim that prong collars emulate the feeling (and results) of a mother grabbing a young pup around the neck in correction.  Additionally, there is plenty of scientific research to support training without the use of pain!  

Why Use a Freedom Harness (or Other Body Harness)?

The Freedom Harness is a dual-clip harness, with one leash connection at your dog’s chest and one martingale-style leash connection on your dog’s back.  Made with stainless steel hardware and four points of size adjustments for the best look and fit!  Other body harnesses that we recommend include PetSafe’s Easy Walk and Softouch Concepts’ SENSE-ation.

·      A harness minimizes strain on your dog’s neck (which protects your dog’s spine, trachea, thyroid gland, eyes, etc.)

·      A front-clip harness is useful for redirecting your dog’s pulling energy back in your direction so you can focus on teaching your dog the behavior you WANT while you are walking. 

·      A dual-clip harness (like the Freedom Harness) provides flexibility of use, so you can clip your leash in multiple configurations depending on what your dog needs most!

·      A harness is comfortable and, when used correctly, should not cause any skin irritation or sores.  The Freedom Harness even has a velvet underbelly strap for maximum comfort!

·      Harnesses are Sexy.  Step aside old-school prong collars, in 2016 all tough dogs are demanding harnesses to bolster their street cred. 

Ask Us!

This post is not about judging or condemning you if you have used an aversive tool in the past, or currently use one with your dog.  We just care about getting the word about regarding other options available for walking tools, which is why we are so excited about the Harness Exchange at the Pits on the Plaza event!  If you have more questions about this topic, please feel free to contact us and we’d love to discuss it with you further.

In the mean time, let’s get the word out about this event! 

·      If you have a pit bull, come check out Pits on the Plaza on October 22nd at Centerra in Loveland!  Share with your friends, tell the neighbors!  

·      If you have been using a prong, choke, or electronic collar and might be interested in giving something different a try, bring your old tool to the event and get your pup fitted for a sexy harness for FREE! 

And this event isn’t just for pit bulls either . . . all types of dogs could use some harness love!

Origins: Charissa

Written by Summit Dog Training Associate Trainer Charissa Beaubien

I grew up in the mountains of Salida, Colorado on my family’s farm with horses, chickens, cows, dogs, and cats. My best friend was a hybrid dog named Raydar. Raydar and I spent our childhood adventuring and exploring the Rockies together.

Charissa & Raydar playing dress up.

I think back on my childhood and realize that there were always dogs around; when I had Raydar, we also had four other dogs. I learned a lot about dog communication by watching our five (or more) dogs interact and figure out life together. We never owned leashes or groomed our dogs, the dogs slept inside and ate scraps mixed with what ever else was laying around. Our dogs were treated very well and all lived full long lives but they were always just dogs. They spent most of their day outside laying in the sun or protecting the cows, they also went on adventures when we would go hunting or out to chop wood. In town they followed us around the streets saying hello to other dogs or slept in the truck if we just had to run errands. I remember thinking it was weird that people didn’t take their dogs everywhere with them.

Left to Right: Chance, Honey, Raydar & Annie

I moved to Ohio during my teen years, and there began working professionally with animals in 2009 at a local humane society and soon discovered a passion for helping those in need. I remember this time in my life vividly as I started working at the shelter and soon discovered people treated their animals very differently then I had as a child. They would surrender their old dogs because they just purchased a new puppy. Or people would hurt and abuse their dogs because they were acting like any dog would. I also saw a lot of good people give loving homes to shelter dogs! 

While working at the shelter I was able to intern under a "balanced” trainer teaching classes and training the shelter dogs. In that time a skinny pit bull/hound mix named Dylon walked into my life. Dylon had been abandoned and tied to a tree so that his collar had become imbedded and he was diagnosed with acute renal failure due to stress. The shelter’s veterinary team was not optimistic. But Dylon chose me. There had been a handful of dogs I wanted to adopt from the shelter but alas this skinny boy wouldn’t leave me alone.  He went home with me as a foster dog were he recovered quickly, and soon after I adopted him. However healthy, Dylon had many behavioral hiccups such as separation anxiety, handling sensitivity, and lack of manners. I was unable to use force or intimidation with Dylon due to his injuries, and this prompted me to began researching positive training methods to use with him.

Meet Dylon!

While I was training under my mentor he told me these methods would never work and that I would never be a good trainer because I was a girl and thus I was not strong enough (mentally or physically) to make a dog respect me. This lit a fire under me to prove him wrong. I knew that by using love and empathy I could build a relationship with an animal and in this way I could teach them new things!  Dylon proved that trust was the key to building a lifelong relationship with me, that to this day is unbreakable.

Charissa and Dylon near Red Feather Lakes paddle boarding and looking for Ducks.

Charissa, Dylon, and boyfriend Tyler enjoying Moab’s Red Rock mountains

In 2013 I dedicated my career to progressive positive reinforcement marker-based training. I decided to take Karen Pryor’s Certified Training Partner course and graduated as a certified animal trainer in 2014. I am enthusiastic about continued education and public outreach. In 2015 I received a second animal training certification through CCPDT, becoming a Certified Professional Dog Trainer – Knowledge Assessed. I am currently working towards a Silver Certification in Low Stress Handling.

My current job is at the Humane Society of Weld County as the Behavior Technician, in addition to being the Associate Trainer at Summit Dog Training. I am working to develop the behavior department at the shelter and group classes for the animals in the shelter's care as well as the animals in the community. I also work at CSU as a Colorado State University lab instructor for the first year Veterinary Students teaching low stress handling.   

I spend my free time camping and hiking with Dylon and a new addition Arja, a Cornish Rex kitten, in beautiful Fort Collins, CO. My goal is to change myths about shelter dogs and express to owners that compassion, trust, empathy, and fun build lasting human animal bonds. I want to show people that we can allow our dogs to be dogs and that by doing so we are fulfilling their needs and creating behaviorally healthy canines. And that when someone tells you that you can’t, prove them wrong.

Dylan gets cozy on a mountain adventure as the night slows down.

Shelter Dog 101 - New Class!

Summit Dog Training Associate Trainer Charissa Beaubien KPA-CTP, CPDT-KA (read full bio here!) has a passion for helping shelter dogs transition smoothly into their forever homes.

Charissa with her own shelter pup, Dylon.

Through past shelter experience as well as in her current capacity as the Behavioral Technician for Humane Society of Weld County, Charissa has seen first hand how timely and applicable training advice can make the difference between a rescue dog staying with their adoptive family or being returned to the shelter.  In order to assist more rescue pups and their new families, we are adding a new class to the schedule: Shelter Dog 101.  This four week course is specifically designed for the needs of shelter dogs making the transition to "normal" life in a loving family.  Many shelter dogs come with challenges that other dogs don't always face, like separation anxiety, destructive chewing, potty training, and understanding polite play and social manners.  This course provides a way for new adoptive families to get support specifically for these issues, as well as get started bonding with their new shelter pup, in a fun and supportive class setting.  

Adopting a dog from a shelter is a wonderful choice, but can be a significant financial investment depending on the physical and mental health of the dog.  This class is a way for us to make training more accessible to adoptive families and get everyone started off on the right track!  If you are interested in the class, pick up a coupon from your dog's Northern Colorado rescue (we'll be distributing those very soon!) or send Charissa an email with a copy of your dog's adoption papers and we'll send you a coupon directly!   

Puppy In The Park

I just need to brag about some great students for a minute! Over the summer months, we met weekly in City Park, Fort Collins, for Puppy In The Park drop-in class.  This class was for graduates of my Puppy Basics and Puppy Confidence classes who were looking for extra opportunities to practice the skills they learned in new and more challenging environments.  And let me tell you, between baseball games, family reunion gatherings, and distracted PokemonGo players wandering through our makeshift classroom, the learning environment at City Park has certainly provided lots of great challenges!  

Cassie's mom sent me these pictures from one of the classes, and looking through them made me so proud!  These pups have all made great progress since we've started working!

Cassie the Australian Cattle Dog

Ryder the Australian Cattle Dog

Anaali the Golden Doodle

Briar the Labrador Retriever

Stinson the Hungarian Puli

Chief the German Shepherd

Great job, everyone!  Keep doing fun things with your pups!

1409 E Olive Ct, Fort Collins, CO 80524

1409 E. Olive Ct
Fort Collins, CO 80521

That's where you can find us teaching classes and having fun with our dogs starting next week!  Well, actually you are thinking about stopping stop by to check it out (please do!) you will likely also find us there this week, because we are busy, busy getting it ready to go!  We'll share some better pictures once it is all set up, but in the mean time, here is the "little red dog" hard at work this afternoon:

Stop by to see us soon!  We have lots of fun classes starting up next week. You see all of them on our Group Classes page!

Essential Canine Skills for Hiking Success

Do you want to have fantastic hiking adventures with your dog, but you don’t know where to start?  Getting out in the wild can be challenging enough without an over-enthusiastic dog contributing to the stress.  In case you missed our “Hiking With Your Dog 101” seminar last night at Kriser’s Natural Pet, let’s review the list of foundation skills that are essential for enjoyment and safety out on the trail:

Essential Skills for Hiking Success:

•       Recall

•       Sit

•       Stay

•       Hand Target

•       Give Attention to You

•       Leave It

•       Follow Your Directional Cues

Here is Roo responding to my directional cue to advance down the rocks ahead of me.

Now, before you grab your dog and your leash and head to the mountains to start running through this list with your dog, let’s start a little more simply.  Practice each of these individually (5 minutes at a time, with breaks) at home, in your own backyard, first.  Just like you learned to ride a bike in your driveway and not out on the highway where there are higher stakes, your dog should learn new skills (or brush up on rusty skills) at home first and then take it out to the more challenging environment.  Start small and reward your dog when they respond correctly to your cues.  Be positive – when you are out on the trail, you want your dog to LOVE coming back to you instead of chasing the wildlife.  So be happy, positive, and encouraging at home too.

When you think your dog is ready for a bigger challenge, you can head to the trail.  But keep in mind that when you are adding more challenges to the environment (like the presence of animal scat and other hikers with or without dogs) you should plan to reduce your criteria a little bit and work back up to the goal behavior.  For example, even if your dog can do a 3-minute sit stay inside the house, perhaps start with a 15-30 second sit stay while other hikers are passing by, with enough distance to help your dog be successful and make good decisions. And be ready to reward BIG for great responses!

These training foundations are just one aspect of preparing for happy, safe hikes with your dog.  Don’t forget about conditioning & stretching, pet first aid, proper equipment, and trail etiquette; these are all components that make the trail a pleasant place for everyone involved.  Look for future blog posts on each of these topics, or contact us to get one-on-one help with preparing you and your dog to hit the trail together!

Two Seminars Coming Up In Fort Collins!

Summit Dog Training is partnering with Kriser's Natural Pet in Fort Collins to offer two different seminars in July.

Monday, July 18th will be Hiking with Your Dog 101 from 6-7pm.  Come learn about a variety of equipment options, foundation skills, and safety tips that will make hiking with your dog an enjoyable experience for everyone involved!

Monday, July 25th will be What to Expect When You Are Expecting . . . A Puppy! from 6-7pm.  If you are thinking about adding a puppy to your family in the near future, this seminar is a great way to get lots of info in one place!  Topics include house training, puppy chewing, basic manners, and more!

For both seminars, please RSVP to amber@summitdogtraining.com to reserve your spot.  You can also sign up online.  The cost for each seminar is $5, and 100% of the proceeds from these events will go to benefit Animal Rescue of the Rockies.   

Puppy Basics Graduation June 2016

Six adorable puppies graduated from Puppy Basics last week!  This class has always been one of my favorites to teach; watching pups and their owners get started on the right foot reminds me why I love dog training!  

In addition to some fun graduation games to show off the skills that the pups learned over our six week class, all of the pups also completed the elements of the AKC S.T.A.R. Puppy test.  This test demonstrates that each pup has achieved the foundation skills necessary to become a polite citizen of our human society.  

Our next puppy basics class starts Saturday, July 16th, to be held at City Park in Fort Collins, Colorado.  Because this class will meet in a public place frequented by a lot of dogs, registration is limited to puppies over 16 weeks old who have completed their veterinarian-recommended vaccines.  We will meet at 9am on 6 Saturdays to beat the heat and the crowds!  If you'd like to join the class, visit our Sign Up page.  If you have any questions you can send us an email!

Here are a few pictures from the graduation class this past week:  

Create, Then Consume

I recently read an article by The Everygirl on a photographer who has made a name for herself in her industry through creative branding and successful leveraging of social media.  Although I’m not a photographer, or even as artistic and trendy as Jenna Kutcher, I haven’t stopped thinking about one of the things she said about staying inspired in your business:

“Create, then consume.”

She describes the world of social media as a shouting match, one that can block our own creativity from flowing freely.  You can read the article for some great practical suggestions about how to change your focus from consuming to creating; it’s good stuff. 

I’ve been pondering on this a lot as it relates to our dogs and training.  How many times do I think “man, I wish I had time to teach my dog x, y, and z” and it never seems to make it to the top of the list; but yet I find the time to check Facebook for five minutes (*cough* or more *cough*) every morning and night.  If I spent just as much time teaching my dog something new every day, he might be qualified to run for president four years from now. 

I have initiated a little challenge for myself.  I’m working up to the goal behavior of lots of training, little bit of social media, so to start out, my objective is to spend at least half as much time on training as I do checking SM platforms.  So if I spend 30 minutes on Facebook, I will do a 15-minute (or 3 5-minute) training session(s) with my own dog each day. 

Roo has loved the extra attention this week!  He's already fine-tuned his pivoting skills (getting ready for his Intermediate Parkour Dog Title!) and practiced backing up onto high objects.  

If you want to join me on this challenge, I’d love to have company!  Even if you don’t have a dog to train, find something else to start working on.  Pick up an instrument you haven’t practiced in years, find a language-learning application, start an educational book, or a writing project.  15 minutes doesn’t seem that long, especially compared to how much time I often spend consuming online. 

If you and your dog accomplish something great during these sessions, I want to see it!  Share you progress on Facebook or Instagram so that we can encourage each other!

Weekend Adventures & Helicopter Dog-Parenting

This weekend we escaped to the mountains for a few days, trading in the 95+ degree days that Fort Collins experienced for cool mountain breezes and remnants of snow.  Of course, the dog came along, as did our adventurous friends Charissa and Tyler and their two pups, Dylon and Chip. 

We set off Friday night after work, drove two hours all the way through Rocky Mountain National Park, found our destination trail head, grabbed our packs and three leashes and hit the trail.  The plan was to hike 5.5 miles to a lake that first night . . . but as adventures are prone to do, it didn’t work out exactly the way we had intended.  

Eventually we were wandering around in the dark on a service road looking for the next part of the trail.  Definitely a great thing to do past 11:00 PM when we’re worn out, starting to get cold, and the dogs have just scared us half to death with an inquisitive incident too close to a gushing river culvert for comfort. 

We give up the search for the trail and find a campsite. Not perfect, but serviceable for the night.  Thank you, to whatever organization owned the dump truck and backhoe that provided us shelter from the wind and a barrier in case of early morning travelers on the service road.

Crazy kids.

The next day we continued the search for the trail, and finally decided that it was obscured by the rushing river and with three pups it would not be safe to attempt a crossing.  An alternate plan was decided on, and we made a camp, in a beautiful spot directly under the continental divide. 

The dogs romped in the swamp and streams, we sat in the sun and played cards, we all took naps in the middle of the day (can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten to do that!), and generally rested and enjoyed being out in the fresh air.  It wasn’t the 20 mile hiking loop that we had planned.  But this was perfect.

Being trail dogs is rough sometimes.

On the way back to the trail head the next day, Roo and Dylon enjoyed some off-leash scurries through the woods and brambles along the trail.  After a while, Roo started to venture further from the path to the right - in the direction of the river (and the very steep embankments leading down to it).  At this point, I started feeling a little bit like a helicopter parent: constantly worried about where he was, nagging, continuously asking him to check in with me. . . none of which thrilled him very much, and it wasn’t very relaxing and peaceful for me either!  Eventually I just put him back on leash for a bit so that I wasn’t constantly fussing with him.

Reflecting on this after our trip concluded, I have connected a few dots about this situation that have shed some light (although not excused) my downslide from relaxed off-leash moderator into overbearing dog-mom.  And I thought, “If I’m seeing this response in myself so easily, when I generally trust my dog off-leash and know the disadvantages of constantly fussing without a good reason, how easy it is for my clients to default to this type of communication with their dogs?”  

As far as I can tell, my micromanagement of my dog in this situation boils down to the emotion of fear, residual from the near-mishap that occurred in the dark on Friday night.  The horrifying images and feelings that come to mind when thinking of the “what-ifs” of that scenario are still uncomfortable, almost a week later, so it makes sense that not quite 2 days post-incident my brain would still be especially prone to anxious or fearful responses connected to some of the same stimuli.

This has been a helpful thing for me to remember, and recognize how it so easily infiltrated my attitude when interacting with my pup.  Without addressing the underlying emotions of anxiety and fear that we have with our dogs (in whatever scenario, due to whatever history), these emotions will have a significant impact on how we communicate, to the point of undermining our training goals. 

I am doing more thinking and researching on the impacts of emotions (good and bad) on our communication style, and how this can affect our experiences with our dogs, and plan to write more about this topic soon.  But in the mean time, I want to leave you with a challenge: if you find yourself being a “helicopter dog-parent,” look at the scenario.  What underlying feelings are causing you to feel the need to control every step your dog makes?  These feelings could be completely legitimate (“my dog is too friendly with kids and we’re walking by a playground and I’m scared he’ll jump up”), and I’m certainly not telling you to turn your dog loose without a second thought.  But just think about it.  You might just realize, like I did, that your anxiety is residual from a previous scenario and not directly because of the situation at hand.   

Good boy, Roo.