My Dog Listens

04/17/2026

🏕 We are away and camping this weekend with the family and our personal pups as well as Luna and Pumba who are having a staycation with us while their mom is on travel. Everyone is enjoying the sunshine with lots of water breaks and hanging out under the shade trees and some air-conditioning as needed. 🌳

🌞 Warmer weather means: staying hydrated 💧

Holding your hand or taking a foot out of your sandals 🩴 to ensure you can tolerate the ground heat yourself for 30 seconds to assess the safety for your pups pads on their feet and ge***al areas as they touch the ground when they often sit down.

Carry alcohol wipes to wipe between webbing of feet to help cool them down quicker if you feel they may be to warm. It helps to cool their body temperature quickly without shock. Dogs cool through their feet/webbing and panting. They cannot sweat like we do!

Take breaks often to be proactive and prevent an overheating. Fans are also great! 🚩Do NOT allow dogs to wear booties in summer they will overheat! 🚩

Cheers 🍻 to a beautiful and fun weekend to all! Be safe and have fun! 🐕🐩🐶

It has been a very busy couple of weeks. We will resume business, phonecalls and emails on Monday as we make time to enjoy with our family and create memories. 🙏🏼🐕

03/22/2026

🎉 Congratulations Suki! 🎉

After completing her 3 Week Board & Train, Suki is going home a whole new dog 👏

She put in the work and it shows.
✔️ Improved obedience
✔️ Better leash manners
✔️ More focus and engagement
✔️ Clear communication with her handlers

We are extremely proud of this sweet girl. ❤️

02/08/2026

Baby Gus officially graduates tomorrow. He stayed a couple extra days to ensure the entire family can be with us to go over all he has learned so that it's an easy transition for home and everyone is setup for success. We have enjoyed having him and he has become such a little super star! He is the sweetest little potato. 🥹 We will miss him tremendously but are so proud! Great job Gus!

Some fun things we have learned about Gus:
He loves the warm sunshine on his face and to sun bathe. He enjoys his warm bed and warm sweater. He loves snuggles and to be baby talked to and will melt in your arms. He is insanely adorable. He loves his food. He thinks pooping outside in the cold is absurd. He will p*e immediately when his feet touch snow. He loves to please and show off. 🥰 Place is his favorite command. 😊 Sleeping is his favorite past time.😁

02/06/2026

🐾 My Dog Listens Family: Nokesville • Manassas • Bristow • Gainesville 🐾

This is for our My Dog Listens family and anyone you know in these areas who may need help.

With the ice and snow melting, yards are starting to reveal everything winter left behind. If your yard needs a cleanup, or if you have friends, family, or neighbors dealing with the same problem, our sister company Precision Scooping is ready to help.

As a thank you to our My Dog Listens community, we are offering $25 off on cleanup services when you use

Coupon code: MDLK9

Feel free to share this with anyone you know who has dogs and could use a clean and safe yard. Referrals from our clients mean everything to our small family business and help us continue serving more local pet owners.

This is the perfect time to get yards cleaned up so dogs, kids, and families can enjoy the warmer weather again.

You can message us directly if you have questions, or you can use the link below to get quoted quickly and schedule service.

Free Instant Quote: https://client.sweepandgo.com/precision-scooping-llc-6wp8h/register

💎 Excavating Winter’s Hidden Treasures 💎

Every winter, yards across Northern Virginia quietly store… frozen surprises.

And when the snow melts, it is like discovering diamonds in the rough. Unfortunately, these diamonds smell terrible and nobody wants to pick them up.

That is where Precision Scooping comes in.

Our highly trained P**p Prospectors carefully recover each frozen artifact and safely remove it from your yard. No chisels required. Just skill, dedication, and a strong stomach.

✔ Spring thaw cleanups
✔ Weekly and bi weekly service
✔ No mess. No stress. No treasure hunting required on your part.

Let us turn your yard from archaeological dig site back into a place your family and dogs can actually enjoy.

📞 Call or Text: 571 390 5070
🌐 www.PrecisionScooping.com
📩 Message us to schedule your cleanup before the thaw reveals everything at once.

02/04/2026

We are so excited to have Bergie here with us! Bergie is a great pup, just needs a little fine tuning. He has an understanding of commands but is selective and loves everyone and just wants attention and to say hello! These are not bad qualities by any means! He just gets a little too excited at times and everything can mean "play" to Bergie. So over the next 3 weeks he will be working on some in home manners and learning how to ask to petting a little more politely and calmer since he just became a new big brother! We will also be working on walking nicely next to a stroller so he familiar with that picture once he graduates.
Bergie will be working with our daughter Makayla, myself and Mike. Makayla has been working with animals and dogs since she was just a baby herself. She has helped me with proofing each dog and ensuring they are ready for graduation. She is a huge part behind the scenes and no job is to small or two big for her. Over the summer she worked with a local petting zoo and enjoys training our horses as well as helping to ride others. She is a true natural and animals flock to her with her kindhearted nature and soft kind voice. No doubt Bergie will love her and have so much fun with us all!

Stay tuned! 🤗

Can you guess what Bergie's breeds are? 👀 🐶

02/02/2026

Working real world stimulus and proofing our work.Baby Gus has been doing an exceptional job with working distractions and building up his impulse control! There was lots happening here! Kids, excitement, food, dog distractions, grandma squealing at how cute he was and he just sat there on place minding his own business. What a good boy you are Gus!

Building a solid foundation on patience, trust and clarity is key. When you are working with the grain vs against, it makes things soooo much more fun and enjoyable for all! Need help? Have questions? We are always here!

Www.mdlk9academy.com

02/02/2026

Pumba and Luna came to visit us over the weekend! We love these two sweet potatoes!

Many of our past clients board with us. This allows us to maintain and work on refresher training if needed as well as stayingwith someonethey feel safe and familiar with. We also love to watch them grow, hear about adventures and getting to snuggle them! 💕

We can't wait to see you both next time! Hopefully its a bit warmer so we can go on some fun adventures! 🤗

01/27/2026

🏈🐾 Super Bowl Squares for a great cause 🐾🏈

We’re sharing this because we love supporting local animals. Prince William Animal Advocates is running a Super Bowl Squares fundraiser where each $10 square helps shelter animals and gives you a chance to win $125 each quarter.

If you’re watching the game anyway, this is a fun way to give back.

Football fans! 🏈

It’s that time of year and we are once again doing our Super Bowl Squares contest. The link is below where you will find contest details.

https://superbowlpoolsite.com/contest/638771?p=2026PWAASB

The contest password is 2026PWAASB.

Each square is a $10 donation made to us by PayPal or Venmo.

Horizontal and vertical numbers will be randomly drawn after the grid is full and reshuffled after each quarter. Payout is $125 for each quarter, paid by PayPal or Venmo for a total of $500 (the other $500 goes to the animals!).

PayPal: [email protected]
Venmo:

Good luck and be sure to share with your football and shelter animal loving friends!

01/25/2026

Some enjoyed the snow, some not so much. That's ok, it was a great day and all are warm and comfy. Stay safe out there everyone!

Lets see those pup snow pics 📸!!

01/21/2026

Hello MDLK9 friends and followers! 👋🏼
We are back as of today from a much needed couple weeks vacation to decompress and spend time with our family. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Our dogs enjoyed it just as much with us. 🐕🐕 We are back as of today and will be following up on messages and emails as we took some time away from social media to be able to really appreciate our time off together. 🙏🏼

I'm happy to be back and see all our boarding pups coming in soon and have a new board and train mr. Gus who i will properly introduce later this evening. 🤗

For the past 12 years I have been working diligently to keep clients happy and working overtime. This year I will be slowing down to live more in the moment, be less stressed and enjoy what I do more vs being worked until I'm burnt out. I will only be taking one training dog at a time, possibly 2 if from the same household. I will be focusing on teaching and training owners more. Its not just about me training your dog, its crucial that owners know how to maintain and that they stay consistent with training once they graduate because training with owners is even more important that training with me. Your dog is reliant that you show them the way and maintain consistentency so that clear understanding and fairness is established with you too and not just myself.

Over the last decade I worked hard to study and train to understand behavioral issues such as aggression and fearful behaviors. I specialize in these areas. However, I have found that the more cases I've taken less than 2% have stayed consistent and failed the dog because it was , "to much work" or the usual, "they were doing so good" so they stopped doing the necessary precautions to ensure the dog was setup for success. Due to the excessive amount of time it takes me to train these cases, as well as the liability and failure in clientele to do what was required to ensure best interest for the dog i will no longer be accepting aggression cases. This has been on the table for the past few years. I have given others the benefit and spent days and hours and time separate from my family to provide an outstanding result and people just dont want to follow through on their part. It is not worth my time, hard work, time away from my family or the liability any longer.
I do have a very close colleague that will am referring these cases and they can help you but they will not intake without guarantee of clients following through and will be vetted.

I will currently not be accepting any more lesson clients until further notice at this time to ensure i am not spreading myself thin. Mike and our daughters help me tremendously with our business but I still manage everything myself and I am only one person.

I want to thank each and every client for your business, as you are helping to support not just a veteran owned and operated business but for allowing us to help you with your beloved family members and helping to support our family also. It means the world to us. 🙏🏼✝️

Boarding is limited to ensure a safe and stress free environment with as much playtime and walks as possible. We are usually booked out a few months so please be sure to reserve your spot ASAP!
Board and trains are currently booked into March.

I would also like to add that we have started a new business! Its one that we are looking forward to sharing and helping those in our community to keep it cleaner and safer for you, your family and your pets! Be sure to check it out and give us a like and follow! Your support is appreciated more than you know! God Bless!🙏🏼✝️🐕 Precision Scooping

Sincerely,
Sarah

12/31/2025

🎓 Congratulations to Miss Luna on her graduation this evening! We will miss this sweet girl 💜