Shelby The Dog Lady

08/29/2025

My buddy visiting 🥰

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Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/27/2025

Snoopy is so little! He loves coming to play 🫶🏻🥰

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Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/26/2025

Yes, you have to educate yourself.

Yes, you have to learn new skills.

Yes, you have decide to embrace reality rather than emotion-driven fantasy.

But the truth is, this stuff isn’t wildly difficult.

Use the best tools (tools that empower you). Have consistent rules and structure. Learn how to share proper accountability (negative consequences for poor choices).
Prioritize what’s best for your dog longterm rather than what’s best (most comfortable/rewarding for you) short-term. Follow and/or study with trainers who are reality-based and are able to show consistent results with dogs who have issues like yours. And give yourself permission to lead — which means you’ll take responsibility for guiding your dog to the promised land of good behavior and a healthy mindset… even if you sometimes feel guilty for it.

If you’re struggling it’s not for a lack of information, or tools, or inspiration — it’s because we’re allowing our hearts and our lack of discipline to derail what could be an amazing situation.

It’s us, not the dogs. The answers are out there — and they’re yours as soon as you’re ready to manage your emotions, embrace reality, and do the hard work of showing up
consistently.

But please, please, please, stop allowing the training industry to create the perception that doing this work — whether on your own or with coaching — is something beyond your reach, because I assure you, I’ve watched countless owners who were certain they’d never be able to improve their situations… find themselves living wildly fulfilling, safe, and fun lives with dogs they never dreamed these things would be possible with.

When you embrace reality, and are prepared to step out of your comfort zone, the stuff that’s suddenly available to you is often mind blowing.

TLDR: dog training is simple. It’s us, and our emotions (and the ability for them to be manipulated) that make it hard.

08/25/2025

Arrow visiting for a few days!

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/24/2025

Breesy is the cutest girl ever!! She’s a doodle but has super short legs !

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/23/2025

Cosmo is a big boy! He’s the definition of a gentle giant!

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/22/2025

This one always rankles folks.

“Cops and trainers/owners aren’t anything alike!” “It’s not about the threat of unwanted consequences, it’s about the skill, timing, and energy!”

Haha…

So many can’t stand the thought of needing to be an authority figure with their dogs, and everyone is certain that only a monster would imply that the *threat* of unwanted consequences even play a role in their dog’s behavior.

We much prefer the romantic, sweet, love will solve it all, dogs just want to please, teach them what you want and they’ll happily do it… beliefs.

And yet we all know that we ourselves behave differently when the threat of unwanted consequences are in play… and we laughingly share stories of dogs who are angels with one owner and devils with another… or how they their naughtiness disappears the second their trainer appears.

Same you, different behavior depending on who’s present — same dog, different behavior depending on who’s present.

So what about the “skill, timing, and energy” claims? They’re all true — but what are they being used for? Some would say, “To properly reward/cultivate desired behavior, communicate clearly and effectively, and build a healthy relationship.” Yep. Absolutely true.

But the other side of this “skill, timing, and energy” coin is that these are being used to properly punish/discourage undesired behavior, communicate clearly and effectively where the boundaries are and what the consequences are for trespassing against these established boundaries… and build a healthy relationship.

The only difference between the trainer (or you) and the cop is that the cop is ONLY there to enforce rules/laws. The trainer’s and your job is far more nuanced, and thus for many owners far more emotionally difficult — but also far more fun. Your job is to love, play, feed, adventure, romp — aka, share all the soft and fun stuff — but critically, to also share the unpleasant consequences that balance everything out and cause your dog to offer their best, and to inhibit their worst.

You and your dog aren’t any different. Even if you don’t like to hear to me say it.

08/22/2025

Does everyone name their Aussies Mila? lol 😂

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Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/22/2025

This! All of this!! 👏👏👏

Often the thing your dog needs most from you is the thing your trainer is least able to “give”. All the technique, coaching, and cheering on in the world won’t cause a strong-minded, misbehaving dog to take a pushover of a human seriously.

This is your real work. Comparatively, the rest is cake.

PS, for all those eager to interject that they CAN coach/guide/make someone into something they’re not prepared/motivated/eager to become, you’re fooling yourself. You can’t make someone into anything they’re not ready to become—that’s not debatable. If someone changes with your help, then they at some point decided they wanted to change. Could you help that shift? Of course. The point here is that unless someone is truly ready to shift, all the great stuff you share won’t open the door—owners have to be ready, motivated, hungry. And that’s their work. You can present the possibilities and show the path, but like any healthy relationship, you can’t *make* someone change or want it more than they do, you can only show the possibilities and allow the person to be a self-responsible adult.

08/21/2025

Loki is such a gorgeous boy 😍

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

Do you need some help with your furry friend?!

Call or email me today for more information!!(504) 327-7518 or [email protected]

Website: shelbythedoglady.com

🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴🐾🦴

08/19/2025

Hey yall!! September is now BOOKED!! Call, text, or Facebook message me to book your training spot for October before it fills up! Only 3 spots left!

08/17/2025

Having worked with thousands of struggling owners and having trained hundreds of professional trainers — the gap, or theme I see over and over is a distinct lack of true understanding of and skill in the application of aversive control.

It’s the elephant in the training room. No one wants to talk about it — at least in any true depth or with any true transparency — because it’s the un-pretty, “unsavory” stuff that doesn’t sell training programs and certainly doesn’t make you the golden boy or girl in the training industry.

And so trainers (and educators of trainers) are disincentivized to discuss this stuff openly, which logically means that all the other stuff will get the focus, and the critical aversive control stuff (that will indeed make or break your success with dogs) will either be ignored or will be demonized.

And logically, that which is ignored or demonized is certainly not going to get the focus, exploration, and mastering that the other “good”, fun, pretty stuff will.

Which is precisely why I see countless trainers and owners having no idea how to stop/inhibit unwanted/problem behavior in any kind of sophisticated, teachable, repeatable, dependable fashion.

Everyone loves to cheer on the transformations of the dogs we get in for serious issues. But almost no one is truly interested in the critical pieces of the program that enable these transformations to occur regularly and predictably.

Here’s the thing. This stuff, if you’re open and willing to explore and learn, isn’t wildly complex or available only for the elite — it’s actually fairly simple, once you understand the principles. Your job, as trainer or owner, is to find someone skilled and honest enough to guide you through these principles. Once you have them, the changes you’ll be able to create in dogs will astound you.