Tails Up Dog Training

09/04/2026

🐾 TRAINING GIVES DOGS A BIGGER LIFE🐾

Sometimes a bigger life is as simple as a trip to the hardware store! 🔨🐶

Here’s Slice practicing her skills while tagging along at a local dog-friendly hardware store.

For a young dog, an outing like this is a fantastic opportunity to experience the world while also learning how to behave in it.

There are carts rolling by, unfamiliar noises, interesting smells, people walking past, and plenty of things she’s never seen before. But the goal isn’t for Slice to greet everyone or investigate everything.

The goal is to learn that she can simply be calm, pay attention to her person, and move comfortably through the world.

🐾 Walk politely through the aisles
🐾 Ignore people and other distractions
🐾 Sit or stay when asked
🐾 Keep four feet on the floor
🐾 Check in with her handler
🐾 Experience new sights and sounds without making them a big deal

These little outings are especially valuable when dogs are young. Every positive experience gives us another opportunity to practice the skills we eventually want from our adult dogs.

And the payoff?

Instead of always having to say, “The dog needs to stay home,” training creates more opportunities to say…

❤️ “You can come with me!”

The hardware store may not seem like much of an adventure to us—but to Slice, it’s another little piece of a very big world she gets to experience.

Training gives dogs a bigger life. 🌎🐾

Want a dog you can confidently take more places and include in more of your life? That’s exactly what we help families build at Tails Up Dog Training. Start with the basics, keep building those skills, and see just how much bigger your dog’s world can become.

Doesn’t she look proud of herself??!

🐾 Come train with us!

09/03/2026

This one never fails to make us laugh.

What’s the biggest misconception you had about living with dogs before you owned one? 🐕🐾 🐾

08/26/2026

🐾❤️ HAPPY NATIONAL DOG DAY! ❤️🐾

Today we celebrate the dogs who make us laugh, keep us moving, challenge us, comfort us, teach us patience, and somehow manage to become such an important part of our families.

At Tails Up, we’re lucky enough to spend our days watching relationships between dogs and their people grow stronger. From brand-new puppies learning their first skills to seasoned competitors, therapy dogs, beloved family companions, and everything in between—we think every dog has something special to teach us. ❤️

So today, let’s fill our feed with DOGS! 🐶

👇 Share a favorite photo of your dog in the comments and tell us their name! These are two of my personal dogs, Knox & Slice!

Current dogs, past dogs, puppies, seniors, purebreds, mixed breeds—we want to see them ALL. 🥰

Because really…around here, every day is Dog Day. 🐾❤️

08/25/2026

🐾 CAN YOU NAME ALL 10 BREEDS? 🐾

We looked around class today and realized we had something pretty unusual—10 different breeds of dogs training together in one class! 🤩

One of the things we love about group training is seeing dogs of every shape, size, breed, and personality learning side by side.

So naturally, we had to turn this into a challenge! 😄

🎥 Watch the video closely…

🐶 There are 10 different breeds represented.

🔎 How many can you identify?

👇 Put your guesses in the comments! If someone has already started a list, feel free to help them fill in the missing breeds.

Bonus bragging rights if you can name all 10! 🏆

And no cheating by asking your instructor. 😂

We’ll post the answers later!

08/25/2026

🐾 TRAINING GIVES DOGS A BIGGER LIFE 🐾

Sometimes a bigger life includes adventures you didn’t plan! 😬

While traveling this weekend, we unfortunately ended up with a flat tire on the interstate. Our unexpected adventure included being rescued by a State Trooper and a roadside assistance worker, followed by a trip to Tires Plus to get us back on the road. 🚗🛞

And, of course, the dogs were along for all of it!

Instead of an already stressful situation becoming even more difficult, the dogs were able to calmly roll with the changes—new people helping us, unfamiliar places, waiting around a tire shop, and a completely disrupted routine.

In fact, everyone we encountered commented on how well-behaved the dogs were. ❤️

This is one of the reasons we train.

We practice stays, settling, leash manners, ignoring distractions, and behaving appropriately around unfamiliar people because someday those skills may be needed somewhere we never anticipated…like a tire shop hundreds of miles from home!

Training gives our dogs the ability to adapt to our lives—not just the fun outings and carefully planned adventures, but the unexpected moments, too.

And on a stressful day, having dogs who could simply hang out quietly and be good companions made everything a little easier.

❤️ Good dogs made a bad day better.

Training gives dogs a bigger life—and sometimes it makes our lives better, too. 🐾🌎

08/25/2026

New t-shirts, 3/4 sleeves, long sleeves, and hoodies now available! Update your wardrobe and show your support!

https://www.bonfire.com/tails-up-shirts-fall2026/

Buy Tails Up Shirts (Summer/Fall 2026) merchandise from Tails Up Dog Training. Featuring Heather Magenta Premium Unisex Tees, professionally printed in the USA.

08/24/2026

🏆🐾 CONGRATULATIONS KATHY & CRUNCH! 🐾🏆

A huge congratulations to Tails Up instructor Kathy and her Golden Retriever, Crunch, on their fantastic 2nd Place finish at this past weekend’s AKC Regional Qualifier in Topeka! 🎉

Regional Qualifiers bring together talented obedience teams competing for the opportunity to advance to the AKC National Obedience Championship (NOC)—making this an especially exciting accomplishment!

Kathy & Crunch’s success represents countless hours of training, practice, teamwork, and dedication. ❤️

We love seeing our instructors out there putting their own training to the test. Competition provides an objective standard for evaluating our skills and continually challenges us to become better trainers—knowledge and experience that our instructors bring right back to the students they teach at Tails Up.

Way to go, Kathy & Crunch! We are so proud of this team and their outstanding performance! 🥈🐶💙

Please join us in congratulating them! 👏👏👏

08/22/2026

🐾 **TRAINING GIVES DOGS A BIGGER LIFE** 🐾

Next up in our series… **PATIO SEASON!** ☀️🍽️🐶

There's something pretty great about enjoying dinner outside or spending an afternoon at a dog-friendly brewery with your dog relaxing quietly beside you.

And that last part—**relaxing quietly**—is the key!

We like to start taking our puppies to appropriate dog-friendly places while they're young. But our goal isn't to have them greet everyone they see. In fact, we're teaching just the opposite.

🐾 People can walk by without saying hello.
🐾 Another dog can be nearby without becoming an invitation to play.
🐾 Food can arrive without noses on the table.
🐾 Servers can come and go without creating excitement.
🐾 And sometimes the most important skill is simply lying down, relaxing and doing…nothing!

**Socialization isn't just about socializing.** It's about teaching puppies how to comfortably and appropriately exist in the world around them.

If every new person pets your puppy and every dog becomes a playmate, your puppy can quickly learn that seeing people and dogs means **“GET EXCITED!”** That's not particularly helpful when you eventually want an adult dog who can calmly accompany you places.

Start young. Keep outings short and positive. Reward calm behavior. Let your puppy observe the world without needing to interact with all of it.

Those early lessons can eventually give you a dog who is welcome at patios, breweries, coffee shops, community events and all kinds of adventures.

And that's the whole idea behind this series:

❤️ **Training creates more opportunities to say, “Yes, you can come with us!”**

**Training gives dogs a bigger life.** 🌎🐾

Does your dog enjoy patio season with you? Share a picture in the comments! 👇

08/19/2026

🐾 **TRAINING GIVES DOGS A BIGGER LIFE** 🐾

We're starting a new series about one of our favorite reasons to train our dogs: **training gives them more opportunities to be part of our lives!** ❤️

First up… **CAMPING!** 🏕️🐶

For many dogs, a camping trip is the ultimate adventure—new places to explore, trails to hike, interesting smells everywhere, evenings around the campfire, and best of all, lots of time with their people.

But taking your dog camping is a whole lot more enjoyable when you've put some training in first!

A dog who can:

🐾 Walk nicely on leash through a busy campground
🐾 Come when called
🐾 Settle quietly while you're relaxing around the campsite
🐾 Leave food, wildlife, or other tempting things alone
🐾 Pass other dogs and people appropriately
🐾 Stay where you ask instead of wandering off
🐾 Adapt comfortably to sleeping and relaxing somewhere new

…is a dog who is much easier to include in the adventure.

And **that's why we train.**

Sit, down, stay, come, heel and leave it aren't just exercises we practice in class. They're skills that eventually give us more freedom to say:

❤️ **“Yes, you can come with us!”**

Not every dog will enjoy every adventure—and that's okay! But good training creates opportunities. It gives our dogs the skills they need to safely experience more of the world alongside us.

**Training gives dogs a bigger life.** 🌎🐾

Does your dog go camping with you? We'd LOVE to see a picture from your adventures in the comments! 🏕️👇

08/18/2026

🎉🐾 Congratulations to our newest Canine Good Citizens! 🐾🎉

A big congratulations to all of the Tails Up students who passed their AKC Canine Good Citizen (CGC) test last night! We’re so proud of these dogs and their owners for all the training and teamwork that went into this accomplishment. 👏

So, what exactly is a Canine Good Citizen?

The AKC Canine Good Citizen program recognizes dogs who demonstrate good manners at home and out in the community. During the 10-part test, dogs are asked to show skills every pet owner can appreciate, including:

🐾 Politely greeting a friendly stranger
🐾 Sitting calmly for petting and grooming
🐾 Walking nicely on leash
🐾 Moving through a crowd
🐾 Coming when called
🐾 Staying with their owner at a distance
🐾 Behaving appropriately around another dog
🐾 Remaining under control around distractions
🐾 Calmly handling a brief separation from their owner

There are no treats or training tools used during the test, so passing is a wonderful demonstration of the skills, communication, and reliability these teams have developed together.

And that’s really what the CGC program is all about—not having a “perfect” dog, but developing a well-mannered companion who can comfortably be included in more of everyday life. ❤️

Congratulations to all of our new Canine Good Citizens and their dedicated owners! Your hard work paid off! 🎓🐶