Lil' Rascals Dog Training

Lil' Rascals Dog Training A fear free private training school designed exclusively for anxious, aggressive, and reactive dogs

09/04/2026

Your next walk doesn’t have to start the second you leave the driveway.

Give your dog a warm-up first.

For the first few minutes, stay close to home and read the gauges:

Can you walk on a loose leash?

Can your dog respond to their name?

Can they turn back toward you when you ask?

Can they respond to a couple of easy cues they already know?

You’re not looking for perfect obedience. You’re figuring out what your dog has access to today.

If those things are easy, great. Start your walk.

If they’re harder than usual, that’s useful information too. Spend another minute warming up. Make things easier. Give them a little more time before asking them to navigate the rest of the neighborhood.

Try it on your next walk: don’t worry about distance for the first 3–5 minutes. Stay near home, run through your gauges, and notice whether the walk feels different once you actually get moving.

Save this and try the warm-up before your next walk.

08/31/2026

Buddy’s parents didn’t think he was very smart.

Not in a mean way.

He was just kind of a space cadet.

He was generally a good dog, but out in the world, Buddy was interested in absolutely everything except the people holding his leash.

Trying to get him to do anything felt like talking to someone who wasn’t in the conversation.

Then his parents started learning how to actually communicate with him.

And Buddy started answering.

That’s when they realized this dog they thought was a little clueless is actually really freaking smart.

He learns fast. He loves figuring things out. And he’s become genuinely fun for them to train.

This video still makes me laugh.

We introduced the beginning of “play dead” during his lesson that day. Just for fun.

A few hours later, this showed up in my messages.

Turns out Buddy was never the space cadet they thought he was.

They just needed to figure out how to get on the same wavelength.

And once they did, Buddy had a whole lot to show them.

For the record, I will not be testing whether my murder prevention protocols are actually responsible for my continued s...
08/27/2026

For the record, I will not be testing whether my murder prevention protocols are actually responsible for my continued survival.

The data is flawed. I’m comfortable with that.

But this is one of the things that makes reactivity so interesting.

A behavior can become incredibly convincing when it appears to work every single time.

Your dog doesn’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t barked, lunged or growled. They only know what did happen:

They saw a potential problem.
They responded.
The problem went away.

That’s a pretty compelling learning history.

So reactivity training isn’t just about getting your dog to stop doing the loud thing.

I want to change what they believe the loud thing is accomplishing.

I want them to have enough experiences where they wait, gather information, try another option and discover that the outcome they wanted can happen without the meltdown getting credit for it.

That’s how we start making room for flexibility.

And unlike me, your dog can safely find out whether they were wrong.

If you’re raising a reactive dog in Johnston County, NC, follow along. This is the kind of stuff we talk about here.

If you’ve ever been in a relationship where you had to walk on eggshells around that person, you know how much brain spa...
08/25/2026

If you’ve ever been in a relationship where you had to walk on eggshells around that person, you know how much brain space it takes up.

You notice everything. The sigh. The tone. The way they walked into the room. Whether they’re quieter than usual.

Your brain gets really good at collecting tiny pieces of information because those pieces might help you predict what happens next.

And when you finally have a relationship where you don’t have to do that?

You realize how exhausting it was.

That’s what I want you to think about when I talk about becoming a secure base for your reactive dog.

It’s not about being perfectly calm or making sure your dog never experiences anything difficult.
It’s about becoming predictable enough that you don’t require constant monitoring.

Your reactive dog already has a lot of information to process. Every bit of capacity they don’t have to spend figuring you out is capacity they can use to explore, make decisions, cope with stress, recover, and build resilience.

Security frees up bandwidth.

And that bandwidth matters when the world already feels like a lot.

If you’re a Johnston County dog parent trying to help your reactive dog feel more capable in the world, you’re in the right place. Follow along.

08/24/2026

Loose leash walking requires just as much skill from the person holding the leash as it does from the dog attached to it.

Your hands should be able to fluently lengthen and shorten the leash, loosen and tighten your grip, and create or remove space as the moment requires.

Turns are a perfect example.

A really common mistake is keeping the same grip on the leash as you change direction. The dog falls slightly behind the turn, runs out of leash, and gets dragged around behind you.

Watch her hands in this clip.

Her dog gives the slightest hesitation as she turns. Instead of tightening her grip and pulling her around, she lets the leash slide through her hands and gives her a little breathing room.

That tiny adjustment opens up enough space for her dog to choose to follow the turn instead of being dragged through it.

Hence my very normal dog-training feedback:

“Nice hands! You did not kill a baby bird today.”

That analogy actually comes from my horse-training days.

As a kid, I was taught to hold the reins like a baby bird: securely enough that it can’t wiggle out of your grasp, but gently enough that you don’t make it's eyes pop out.

Kind of morbid now that I think about it but.. I want the same fluency on a leash.

Sometimes your hand closes.
Sometimes it opens.
Sometimes the leash gets shorter.
Sometimes you feed more of it out.

Good leash handling isn’t about keeping a perfectly loose grip.

It’s about learning how to use your hands well enough that the leash becomes communication instead of something you use to physically move your dog around.

If your therapist promised that after three months you would never overreact again, you should probably get your money b...
08/20/2026

If your therapist promised that after three months you would never overreact again, you should probably get your money back and run.

Because that’s not a realistic promise. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how emotional regulation works.

The same is true for your reactive dog.

I’m deeply skeptical of anyone promising to “fix” reactivity in a way that means your dog will never have a disproportionate emotional response again. No one can ethically guarantee that outcome.

Emotional regulation is capacity, and capacity is fluid.

What we can change is how much stress your dog can successfully cope with before they reach the point of overreaction.

That’s the work.

We create the conditions for more capacity. We give your dog opportunities to experience manageable stress and successfully navigate it. Those new experiences build coping skills and resilience.

Over time, we raise the bar.

Things that once overwhelmed your dog become manageable. They have more options available under stress. They recover. More of everyday life fits within their capacity.

Will that bar be in exactly the same place every day for the rest of their life?

No.

And anyone guaranteeing you otherwise is promising something no nervous system can deliver.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s a dog who can handle a whole lot more life before life becomes too much.

If you’re raising a reactive dog in Johnston County, NC, follow along. I’m here to help you build a dog who can handle more of life, not sell you an impossible promise.

The number 3 keeps showing up in dog training, and at this point I’ve decided to stop questioning it.Not because Day 3, ...
08/18/2026

The number 3 keeps showing up in dog training, and at this point I’ve decided to stop questioning it.

Not because Day 3, Week 3, or Month 3 flips some magical switch in a dog’s brain. Dogs obviously don’t care what the calendar says.

But there seems to be something about these windows that gives change enough time to become visible.

Enough time for stress to settle and show us what’s underneath it.
Enough time to get past the first version of a dog and actually learn who they are.
Enough time for a newly adopted dog to feel comfortable enough that new parts of their personality, including behavior problems, begin to emerge.
Enough time for intentional behavior work to stop looking like a few good training sessions and start changing everyday life.

And somehow, my entire approach to reactivity landed in three phases too: Reset. Reboot. Reintegrate.

Maybe 3 is just a really convenient unit for change.
Maybe there’s some psychology behind why humans organize things this way.

Or maybe it’s a little bit magic.

Johnston County NC dog parents: want to see what 3 months of intentional work could change for your dog? Send me “3” and let’s talk.

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