Dacapo Dog Club

09/13/2025

Someone impatiently waiting for their turn 🙄

09/09/2025

Kona meeting my brother for the first time today.

This is not the beginning of what we did to get to this point.

But it exceeds where I thought things would go.

Kona is starting to see it’s not me and him against the world.

09/05/2025

Coco the Havanese rocked his second puppy session yesterday ⭐️

He will be doing big things as a service dog when he gets older.

This session focused on introducing obedience training… which will eventually lead to more specific task training.

It was a looong session but he stayed focused the entire time.

This is the start of Coco seeing that learning new things = a fun puzzle for him to figure out.

08/24/2025

It’s not a lack of focus.

Or inability to complete a certain task.

It’s the frustration that results when asking intelligent animals to perform drill after drill of a taught behaviour.

Dancing bear style.

How we teach them and what we ask of them will determine how motivated they are to work with us …

… and impact their overall relationship with us.

Screenshot courtesy of Lapham's Quarterly

08/19/2025

Completely agree.

Also…

I’ll add… the majority of dogs don’t WANT to be paraded around in environments where all they are expected to do is mope around like Eeyore and not touch or do anything.

Train a dog to be offleash.

Teach them to play or do other things they love.

Do it together.

Focus on what they enjoy doing.

Their lives are short…

And if they love doing things with you…
. the 1% of the time you NEED to take them somewhere like that… it will be easy.

Because it’s a lot easier working with a dog that loves you and is motivated to do things with you…

…than constantly putting dogs in frustrating and confusing situations where they have to follow rules that don’t make sense to them.

During a recent evaluation, someone asked if I take all of the dogs to places like Lowe’s or Home Depot for training. He even said he was looking for a facility that does that.

My answer surprised him: a big NO. And here’s why.

I don’t believe it’s right to go into a business that has nothing to do with dogs and disrupt merchandise or customers. These stores are not training grounds — they’re businesses.

And one thing I see far too often is trainers dropping the leash in these environments. That screams liability and unprofessionalism. A store full of people, equipment, and distractions is no place to gamble with safety. In addition, it’s presumptuous to assume everyone in the store loves dogs just because I love dogs.

Service dogs are the exception — they need real-world training in public spaces. But for pet dogs, professionalism means choosing environments that respect the business, the customers, and most importantly, the dog.

I was also raised not to use something that doesn’t belong to me without paying for it.

08/17/2025

Staffy incoming 🔥

08/13/2025

Stealing a quote that often uses…

“When you change the way you look at things... the things you look at change.”

Changing things from the inside has done more for Ginny than any outside tool or technique ever could.

She is still an Anatolian shepherd.

She will never be a dog park dog…

(Most dogs aren’t anyway..)

But she has turned a corner on her explosive reactivity and redirection…

Not every dog is an instant friend… but she responds to guidance now through these situations.

I want to make one thing very clear though…

She is being introduced to other dogs like this because of who she is NATURALLY.

I did not make her playful and friendly to dogs she knows.

That’s just who she is.

All I did was bring that side out and give it a chance to come to the surface.

One of the saddest mistakes I see is owners thinking that this is something that can be trained into a dog.

Dogs get ruined chasing that unreality.

08/08/2025

Happy Friday 🐶

Anyone else feeling like summer is going by way too quickly?

I haven’t shared updates here recently…

So… here’s a photo from a while ago.

Ginny with her flock of clearly-not-sheep to watch over.

I’d say she takes her job pretty seriously.

02/11/2025

The dog version of face timing 🦷

02/07/2025

Very proud of Miss Heidi for the progress she’s made this last month.

She showed that she was able to handle herself appropriately during direct interactions with dogs and people who were new to her…

…as well as also showing improvement in managing her frustration during training and outings.

She was sent home early from her board and train to continue training through her behavioural reservations with her IGP trainers.

Wishing Heidi and her owners the best in their continued training efforts.

I have no doubt that this is the type of dog whose circle can continue to grow with good guidance.