K&C Canine Life Skills LLC

28/06/2025

Find your Zen as you embrace the dog training journey. Learning with kindness and patience helps beautiful life changes to happen.

18/06/2025

Wisdom Wednesday! Did you know that the absence of overt response(s) does always not mean that your dog is “Okay,” “Doing good,” “Fine,” “Doing well”? It is common for humans that when they no longer see their dog’s overt behaviors (i.e.: lunging, barking, growling) that everything is good. The reality is that that is only the tip of the iceberg.

Humans also need to be observant of the covert indicators that indicate that a dog is not handling the situation well. I advise to people to be observant of their dog’s body language including eyes, mouth, tail, and body posture. Yes, our dogs tell us a lot through their body language. In addition, humans need to be observant of physiological indicators including heavy breathing and drooling.

This week’s wisdom is to be mindful of your dog(s)’ covert body language indicators letting you know that he or she may not be “Okay,” “Doing good,” "Fine,” “Doing well.”

As always, take care of each other, be your dog’s teammate, and work together.

16/06/2025

Being your dog's leader is being your dog's advocate and keeping him or her safe.

Leadership: the most dangerous word in dog training “Leadership” is included in almost every dog-related book. Sometimes it is used in archaic and debunked ways, as in “Pack Leader.” Sometimes it i…

15/06/2025

Dog training is a challenging journey for you and your dog. Celebrate the successes. Learn from the challenges. 🤩

04/06/2025

Wisdom Wednesday! Let’s talk about the up the misconceptions about canine aggression. The most important thing to understand is that there is a difference between aggression and reactivity.

Aggression is not simply barking, growling, and/or lunging toward another living being. Aggression is taking any of the aforementioned behaviors to decrease distance between the dog and the scary being possibility causing harm if their indicators are not seen and heard. In many cases, people are seeing reactive behaviors. Reactive behaviors also include barking, growling, and/or lunging toward another living being. Reactive behaviors are meant to create distance between the dog and the scary being and will retreat.

The difference is aggressive behaviors escalate to causing harm and reactive behaviors in the majority of cases will deescalate to retreating away from the scary being. Crystal and I hope this video helps you to better understand canine aggression and reactive behaviors.

As always, take care of each other, be your dog’s teammate, and work together.

04/06/2025

My favorite dog training quote. 🤩

28/05/2025

Wisdom Wednesday! Let’s talk about what our dogs think. Yes, it is fun to speculate about what our dogs may be thinking, but we truly never know. Dogs are delightfully simple beings whose cognitive thought processes do not exceed that of a human two to three year old child. Dogs are not capable of complex thoughts including: “Stubborn,” “Ruling the house,” “Dominating you,” etc.

Dogs are delightfully simple beings who function on two simple premises:
• What works to get them what they want. What does not work to get them what they want.
• What is safe. What is not safe.

We do how our dogs are feelings as they express their feelings via body language (eyes, tail, body posturing, lips) and vocalizing (barking, growling, huffing, snarling). We are able to understand a dog’s emotional state (happy, sad, angry, afraid, etc.). However, we do not know what a dog is thinking.

This week’s wisdom has two parts:
• Be kind and observe your dog’s body language and vocalizations to understand their emotional state.
• Appreciate your dog for the delightfully simple being that he or she is. Who knows, you may not want to know what your dog thinks. LOL!

Above all else, take care of each other, be your dog’s teammate, and work together.

23/05/2025

All dogs are good boys and good girls! All dogs are perfect as they are!

21/05/2025

Wisdom Wednesday! It is often said that people wish that their dogs could talk to them. The fun reality is that our dogs are talking to us, just not the same way as humans! Dogs ‘talk’ to us using body language, actions, and vocalizations.

Examples of body language indicators:
Ears out to the side of head: uncertainty.
High tail (with possible twitchy movement): alert and indicating needing to stop and evaluate the environment.
Wide sweeping tail: Happy and wanting to engage.

Examples of actions:
Lunging: Needing space from whatever or whomever the finds to be scary by decreasing the distance.
Wiggling body and tail: Happy and wanting to engage.
Freezing: Fearful and wanting the scary being to go away.

Examples of vocalizations:
High pitched barking: Happy and wanting to engage.
Growling: Fearful wanting the scary being to go away.
Deep, throaty, rapid barking: Fearful wanting the scary being to go away.

This week’s wisdom is to understand that communication is goes both ways for you to listen to your dog as much as you would like him or her to listen to you. Reciprocated communication goes a long way in the long term!

As always, take care of each other, be your dog’s teammate, and work together.

14/05/2025

Wisdom Wednesday! Let’s talk about your dog's behavior needs. This week I encourage you to shift your mindset from desiring to suppress your dog's behaviors to asking “Why?”.

The first thing to do is understand that your dog’s behaviors are normal for their species. The second thing to do is to understand your dog’s behavior concerns are of concern to humans, because our species does not understand that dogs function different than us.
The third thing to do is ask: "Why is my dog behaving this way?" Of course, asking “Why?” then leads us to ask additional questions including “Who,” “What,” “Where,” and “When.”

Here are a few common canine behavior concerns that you can begin to help by asking “Why?”:

* A dog presents barking at various times of day. Ask “Why?” rather than focusing on suppressing the barking. Your dog is expressing his or her emotional state wanting attention, needing to go out for potty, sad, afraid, alerting you to something that he or she finds to be alarming.

* A dog presents reacting to dogs during walks, walking past the window at home, parks, etc. Ask “Why?” rather than focusing on suppressing the behavior. Your dog is expressing that he or she is experiencing barrier frustration, fearful, stressed.

* A dog presents pulling on his or her leash during walks. Ask “Why?” rather than focusing on suppressing the behavior. Your dog is expressing barrier frustration, really wants to sniff something exciting, or anxious presenting displacement behavior to avoid something scary.

A helpful tip for you is to be inquisitive and question “Why?” is my dog presenting this behavior. Then be a detective asking follow up questions: “Who,” What,” “Where, and “When.” “Why?” is a fantastic starting point to begin your detective work and putting the pieces of the puzzle together to help your dog to overcome his or her canine behavior concerns and live a happy life.

As always, take care of each other, be your dog’s teammate, and work together.

07/05/2025

Wisdom Wednesday! Let’s talk about selecting a dog trainer. Here are questions to ask yourself before contacting someone to have a clear picture of you want and do not want.

What do you want when selecting a Dog Trainer?

This question is open-ended for people to tell me their thoughts as to what they are expecting of a Dog Trainer to achieve for their dog. Many people respond along the lines of “Whatever works” or “Whatever it takes to work”.

These responses often, not always, tell me that the person/people have very little, if any regard for their dog’s well-being and welfare. Often the people with these responses are of the Get It Done personality type seeking quick results in the form of electric collars, prong collars, choker collars, slip leads, etc. NOTE: I do not condone the use of aversives for any dog.

What does ‘whatever works’ or ‘whatever it takes to work’ mean to you?

My first response upon hearing “Whatever works” or “Whatever it takes to work” are subjective terms meaning that something ‘working’ or ‘works’ mean something different to different people.

What do you not want?

For those people, who truly do not know what they want and they are overwhelmed by information overload, I ask about hard no’s or absolutely nots. People who tell me what they do not want provides with great information about them and their thoughts and feelings toward their dog(s). Many people tell me no to the use of anything that will cause their pain or discomfort. Those people are my people as they truly care about their dog and his or her well-being and welfare!

Other people are varied in their responses. For example, a person may be okay with using a prong collar, but a hard no to using an electric collar. NOTE: I do not condone any use of aversives (prong collars, electric collars, choker collars, slip leads, etc.).
“How far are you willing to go to get your desired training results?” Yes, this is a potentially loaded question as it can go one of two directions: with empathy and understanding or abuse. I say this question can go one of two directions, because many people are in it for life with their dog with the patience of a saint to love their sweet boy or girl through thick and thin, good times and bad. Other people will resort to the use of aversive tools (prong collars, electric collars, choker collars, etc.) and escalate to tapping or slapping their dog on the nose, butt, etc., pushing their dog into position to sit or down, dragging the dog away from triggers, etc. NOTE: I do not condone any use of aversives (prong collars, electric collars, choker collars, slip leads, etc.). Those people are not my people as they mean and rude to their dog with little no regard for their sweet boy or girl’s welfare and well-being.

This week’s wisdom is to assess your thoughts as to what you want yours and your dog’s dog training experience to look like. Please prioritize your dog’s well-being and welfare when you are seeking a Dog Trainer. Overall, please be kind and take the time to learn the underlying causes of your dog’s behaviors that may be causing you frustration and select a Dog Trainer who is formally educated about canine behavior. You and your dog will be much happier in the long term.

As always, take care of each other, be your dog’s teammate, and work together.

03/05/2025

Exactly!

Dogs sniffing our shoes or clothes is an information gathering exercise and not an invitation to touch them.

Dogs laying beside us is about companionship and not an invitation to pet them.