Delta Canine

10/30/2026

I’ve been following this gal’s story for awhile and she is running out of options 😣

Please share this post, if you can’t foster or adopt Miss Ruby.

10/27/2026

IT’S TRAINING TUESDAY!!!

Today I wanted to bring up a topic that is extremely relevant these days with the existence of dog parks, and their frequent use.

Many people pull up to the dog park and see lots of dogs running around, some are barking, some are wrestling. It looks like they’re having a ton of fun!

But are they?

It’s very important to advocate for your dog in a social setting such as group play. I would urge you to become familiar with dog body language so that you can advocate for your dog if needed in a group setting. Not all excitement and activity is healthy, and it’s your job to know when you need to step in and help your dog out.

This graphic is a good indicator of some scenarios in which trouble could easily happen if they were allowed to continue. 

Play should be welcomed, and reciprocal. Repeatedly putting a dog in a situation where they are forced to interact with another dog can result in common issues like dog reactivity, anxiety related to interacting with other dogs, avoidance, or even true aggression. Be ready to step in and redirect or remove your dog if circumstances require that!

There is a VERY small percentage of dogs who truly enjoy big group social play such as what you see at a dog park. The good news is, there are lots of alternatives to this – schedule a play date with your dog’s favorite dog friend in a fenced in yard. Consider renting a Sniffspot with known dog friends. Long line walks in an open area with another dog are also a fun idea.

Socialization is important if your dog enjoys that, but there is definitely a right and a wrong way to do that! 

Video in the comments of a play session between Dale and DC dog Alfie, which shows good reciprocal play, where Dale adapts his place style to Alfie‘s and both dogs are comfortable and happy! 

10/13/2026

It’s TRAINING TUESDAY!!!!

I am out of town this week but I still want to give you guys some food for thought and this is one of the most COMMON causes I see when it comes to negative behaviors….

Being aware of trigger stacking is vital when you are working with a dog who struggles with stress-related behaviors.

Take a look!

🐕 Trigger Stacking - why your reactive dog “suddenly” explodes… 🧠

One of the biggest misconceptions about reactivity is that dogs react because of one trigger.

In reality, it’s often the last straw after many smaller stressors have accumulated throughout the day. This is known as trigger stacking.

Imagine carrying a bucket of water. Every stressful, exciting or worrying event adds a little more water to that bucket. Eventually, one tiny extra drop causes it to overflow. In fact, you may hear R+ / FF professionals often refer to this as the “emotional bucket”.

That’s exactly what happens inside many reactive dogs.

What counts as a trigger?

A trigger (also called an stressor) isn’t always something negative. Anything that causes emotional or physiological arousal can contribute, including:

🐕 Seeing another dog.
🚴 A cyclist passing.
👶 Children shouting.
🚗 Heavy traffic.
⚡ Thunder or fireworks.
🏠 Visitors arriving.
✂️ A grooming appointment.
🏥 A veterinary visit.
💤 Poor sleep.
🌡️ Hot weather.
😖 Pain or discomfort.
🚶 Walking on a busy pavement.
🎾 Highly exciting games.
🐿️ Constant squirrel watching.
🚪 Delivery drivers knocking at the door.

Each event may seem insignificant on its own, but together they can dramatically lower a dog’s ability to cope.

The stress (emotional) bucket

When dogs experience stress, their bodies release hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

These hormones prepare the body for action - a completely normal survival response.

The important part is that they don’t disappear the moment the event ends.

Depending on the intensity of the experience and the individual dog, stress hormones can remain elevated for hours, and after particularly stressful events, recovery may take one to three days (sometimes even longer in chronically stressed dogs).

That means your dog may still be physiologically stressed from yesterday’s events before today’s walk has even begun.

Why this matters for reactive dogs?

This explains why your dog may:

❓Walk past five dogs perfectly one day…
💥…then bark at a dog 100 metres / feet away the next.

It isn’t because they’re being stubborn.

It isn’t because they’ve “forgotten” their training.

It isn’t because they’re trying to dominate anything.

⚠️Their nervous system simply has less capacity left to cope. Sometimes - virtually none.

Every trigger brings them closer to their emotional threshold.

Once that threshold is crossed, the brain shifts into survival mode, making calm thinking and learning much harder.

What should we do instead?

Rather than focusing only on the reaction itself, ask:

✔️ What happened earlier today?
✔️ How did yesterday go?
✔️ Has my dog had enough quality sleep?
✔️ Are they in pain or uncomfortable?
✔️ Have they had enough opportunities to decompress?
✔️ Have they experienced several stressful or exciting events recently?

Understanding the whole picture is often far more valuable than analysing the final reaction in isolation.

Helping reduce trigger stacking

💙 Prioritise rest and uninterrupted sleep.
🌿 Allow regular decompression walks in quiet environments.
👃 Encourage natural enrichment such as sniffing and foraging.
📏 Give your dog enough distance from known triggers.
⏸️ Don’t feel guilty about taking a day off from busy walks after a stressful event.
🩺 Rule out pain or underlying medical conditions with your veterinarian.
🎯 Keep training sessions short, positive and below your dog’s threshold.

Sometimes the most productive training session is recognising that your dog has already had enough for the day.

Remember…

Reactive behaviour is often the visible symptom of an overloaded nervous system 👉 not a sign of a “bad” dog.

By understanding trigger stacking, we stop asking:

❌ “Why did my dog suddenly react?”

And start asking:

✅ “How full was my dog’s stress bucket before this happened?”

That simple shift in perspective can completely change how we support our dogs, making training more compassionate, more effective, and far less frustrating - for both ends of the lead. ❤️

09/29/2026

Welcome to the very first ever TRAINING TUESDAY!! 🐕

Our topic today relates to some of the things that you guys mentioned when I first asked about this. Today we are going to talk about

THRESHOLDS in training!

So you might read that and then c**k your head to the side and think, what is a threshold? Is it the thing that you step over to get into your house in the doorway? Well, yes. You’re not wrong. But our wonderful English language is full of words that sound exactly the same, but mean different things… This is one of those.

In this case, the definition of “threshold” is this:

 🔹Starting Point or Boundary: The exact level or limit where something begins to happen, change, or take effect (such as a pain or tax threshold).

Think about it this way. Think of something that you are scared of, or gives you great anxiety – for me, it’s spiders. I love every creature on the face of this earth, except for spiders. They are fine if I can’t see them, but if they their step into my sight💥 

Now I can be a certain distance from a spider without having a panic attack. That distance for me is about 10 feet. Any closer than that, and I’m leaving, and all the while feeling like I have a spider crawling on me. It takes me a little while to shake the feeling! Further away than that, I can cautiously observe and subconsciously. Tell the spider that if he wants to live, he needs to stay at least that far away from me. 😅

So that 10 feet is my threshold when it comes to spiders.

Now let’s relate that to dogs. 

Let’s say we have a dog, and we decide to take that dog for a walk. We are walking along, enjoying the fall breeze, and the leaves that are just beginning to turn, when in the distance, walking towards us, we see another fellow human out, walking their dog and enjoying the beautiful day. Our dog sees the human and the other dog and takes notice – we can tell by perked ears, perhaps a pause and movement or some increased sniffing. But our dog remains calm and can engage with us when we ask, be that with eye contact, or taking treats, or following a cue.

As the other walking pair gets closer, it becomes increasingly harder for our dog to stay engaged with us, and they may begin to exhibit signs of stress – increased, panting, whining, pulling on the lead. This maybe starts to happen at 100 feet.

When the pair gets to be about 50 feet away, our dog just completely loses its mind – barking, lunging, yanking on the leash, and our dog is unable to reengage with us at this point, no matter what tactics we try to use. We get frustrated, we drag our dog past the other walking pair, shaking our head and mumbling under our breath about what a psycho our dog is, and why don’t they listen? How embarrassing!!!

Trust me, we’ve all been there! 😉

What just happened was, our dogs, comfort, level or threshold was crossed because of the shortened distance between our dog and the other dog. Our dog was OK when the pair was in the distance, but the closer they got, the more stressed our dog became, finally launching over its threshold and into reactivity.

Often, when we train, we don’t realize that the majority of our training needs to take place while our dog is under threshold, with the goal of working just at the threshold so that our dog can grow with his or her skills and coping mechanisms. Often times the way to increase the threshold is by increasing distance – so had we taken a different route and kept the distance between ourselves and the other walking pair longer, our dog may not have reacted and we may have been able to do some counter conditioning in the meantime.

Sometimes the threshold can be things in the environment – sounds or smells. We may need to work in a quieter environment in order to maintain our dogs focus, then gradually add in distractions.

This is what we call working under threshold.

So the next time you’re out with your dog and your goal is to have a positive experience and a calm interaction, think about your dog’s threshold and how you can maintain that for them. And the instance that I explained above, we would have wanted to work where the dog noticed the other pair, but could still engage with us. The dog is experiencing some stimulation from the site of the other pair, but is still able to engage with us and training or behavior modification can still occur. 

 here’s more information about thresholds and how they work if you are interested in reading more!

https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/blog/thresholds?format=amp

https://spiritdogtraining.com/sdt_lessons/recovery-after-crossing-the-threshold-3/?srsltid=AU7gw4WjngbLczBq4wSuEC3Yn-fmRQUpDTuzueFx8VaKL6FC3f0HFhMH

https://aggressivedog.com/2024/09/15/crossing-the-dog-behavior-threshold-in-two-steps/

Picture of recent boarding dog Roxanne, who had significantly small threshold for handling, which we worked on while she was here! 🐾



09/24/2026

This is what neglect and mistreatment looks like in rescue.

This is Roxanne.

Roxanne is a foster dog through MARR who is spending the week with me for boarding and a little more thorough evaluation. She has been with a foster for a very short time and her foster is doing a wonderful job with her, but this poor dog has been through some things. She shy away at every touch, she hides her face and trembles. Watch her ears in this video – you can see how hard she is shaking. Everything is scary, and although I can see little glimmers of curiosity in her eyes at times, she is very much shut down and feels like the world is just one big scary place and humans are, too.

She came in as a stray, with a skin infection that was treated at the shelter. But this girl has all the marks of a dog who was only used for breeding, ignored and neglected, and any interaction that she did have with humans…. were probably not good ones. 😣

Rox will need a very special adapter who can help show her that the world is a good place and that life after rescue is safe, and that humans mean love. If you or someone you know are that special someone, please apply on MARR’s website and let’s show this girl how much better life can be 💔

Adoptarott.org

MidAmerica Rottweiler Rescue

09/20/2026

I know it’s been a while since I posted about this guy, but here’s a little story for you!

There once was a foster dog named Bear.

Bear enjoyed taking walks through the neighborhood, and through training has developed great skills that he didn’t have when he first arrived in his foster home.

One day, Bear saw some roadkill in the street while he was going for a walk. He really, really wanted that roadkill as a snack…..

His foster mom taught him a long time ago that if he wanted something, a great way to ask for it instead of pulling, jumping, or mouthing, was to offer a calm-body behavior, and his favorite was “down”, so he thought maybe if he offered his foster mom that behavior as a way of asking for that roadkill, she would give it to him. You know, instead of just dragging her over to it and gobbling it up like spaghetti noodle before she could even blink her eyes. Don’t ask how she knows that. 🙈

He waited patiently for her to think this over, and unfortunately to Bear’s chagrin, his foster mom decided that roadkill does not a good snack make, so instead she called him away. You win some, you lose some... But at least he got some treats out of the deal!

Bear is doing excellent here, and he is ready for adoption to the right home. He can have dog friends, but they need to have a specific temperament. He would do great with somebody who wanted a fetch buddy and had a training background so they can continue to build his skills. He is goofy, handsome, and wants to please. His perfect person out there, we just know it! 🐾

09/15/2026

Hello friends!

How many of you would enjoy a weekly or biweekly training topic discussion?

I’m thinking like a “Training Tuesday” or something along those lines, where I either post about a particular topic potentially with pictures or maybe a short video, or I take topic suggestions from you guys to discuss?

This is purely selfish, as I am a giant dog nerd, and it helps keep my “training brain” in shape 🧠 💪🏼 

If you’d like to see that, drop some comments with small-scope topics or particular training or behavior questions or issues that you’d like me to address! 

Pic of DC dog Thor, who thoroughly enjoyed the pool during his stay with us! Typical lab pup for sure! 😁

09/14/2026

Friends, I am currently taking boarding reservations into NEXT YEAR! September and October are mostly full.

If you need boarding for your pups, reach out to me AS SOON AS you have your tentative plans because I’ve been filling up fast, and I hate telling my regular clients that I can’t accommodate them 😭

There will be some changes coming in 2027, including limited board and train spots 🤩, so be on the lookout for those announcements!

As always, we are so grateful for our clients and the trust you place in us to take care for your beloved four-legged friends. Thank you for allowing me to live my dream of working with dogs on a daily basis ❤️

We are excited to have you all beside us as we continue to grow and provide the best care possible for your dogs 🐾

Pic of DC dogs Neli, Thor and Alfie 🐶 

09/11/2026

 I don’t walk every dog, every day, except this one. And I don’t walk for me. I walk for him. 

This guy, Bandit, relishes these walks, with much of his time spent sniffing the ground and air scenting. Occasionally, he will scratch the ground gently, hoping to release a deeper odor that he can investigate with his nose.

We cover some distance, usually about a mile. He’s an old man, and it helps his arthritis. It gives him an opportunity to do some scent marking, which is a completely natural behavior in dogs, and the fresh air, no matter the weather, is always enjoyable.

But what it feeds most is his mind. It allows him to see, smell, and experience all the things that a dog should be able to experience on a daily basis – scent, sound, different surfaces, visual stimulation, and it allows him to practice those ingrained neurological responses to stimulus, part of the mental enrichment that every dog needs.

People need it, too. So while I also take advantage of all of those things that I am aiming to provide for him with these walks, I try to make sure that I am enriching my mind as well.

This is one of my favorite podcasts, and I’ve taken several of Michael’s classes which have helped me grow in leaps and bounds in my canine behavior journey. You’d be surprised how much translates over to horses, and also humans!

I would encourage you to take some time today to enjoy some enrichment with your dog. For both of you. ❤️

Happy Friday, friends!