Canine College uses a training system that is unique in the local area.

BACKGROUND
Sandra bases her approach to dog training on the working dog clubs of Germany where she grew up. Dog sport clubs meet once a week and groups therefore include dogs at different levels of training: puppies learning foundation skills, young dogs progressing toward goals, and older dogs maintaining what they’ve learned. In classes, some work is done in a group (keeping in mind each dog’s current skill level) and some work is done individually while others watch and learn. The latter is the norm for training seminars as well, which offer working slots and audit (spectator) slots.

Canine College brings this approach to its own training for pets and working dogs. Each individual dog and handler is evaluated and a training plan is created based on the dog’s needs, the problem behaviors (if any) that need to be addressed, and the handler’s goals and interests.

We don’t offer one-size-fits-all dog training, like the 6-week classes offered at most training facilities. Our system takes into account the individual dog, how they learn, and where they need to start. Sure, it’s possible to teach a handler how to make a dog sit, lay down, walk on a leash and come in 6 weeks, but it isn’t possible to teach the dog to generalize those behaviors and ensure they happen no matter the environment or distraction. Many dogs who complete one-size-fits-all training are great in class or at home, but unpredictable and uncontrollable in new situations. Our focus is on helping you train a dog that’s great anywhere.

FOUNDATIONS
At Canine College, we start by building a solid foundation comprised of engagement and impulse control. Not only does this approach help us train individual skills more easily, it prevents common problems from happening as you and your dog progress.

Engagement training builds a bond, creates focus, and helps the dog understand that good things happen when interacting with the handler. Dogs who practice engagement are easier to train, work better around distractions, and are more eager to learn. These are the dogs who are excited for training and always want to do more.

Impulse control teaches a dog to control itself. Many problem behaviors, such as chasing the family cat, nipping at children, and dragging you by the leash are impulse-based and continue despite corrections because they are self-rewarding. Teaching a solid foundation of impulse control helps your dog make the right choices rather than forcing you to address problem behaviors after they occur. By building value in working with you and controlling themselves, you’re creating a solid foundation for all training.

HOW CLASSES WORK
At Canine College, group classes are offered on an ongoing basis. You never wait for a new class to start, and you’re not limited to attending 6 sessions with the same dogs and people even if your dog is progressing at a different speed.

Our drop-in classes offer flexibility. You don’t have to worry about missing 20 minutes of class because you’re running late or your work schedule changed, just come anytime between 7pm and 9pm to train. You also don’t have to worry about missing a class you’ve paid for. Miss a class? Drop in another day!

Additionally, you get a chance to observe other dogs and handlers. Watching others who are at a different level of training improves your own training, from little tips on addressing or teaching a specific behavior, to getting ideas for new activities to try.

Canine College also offers private classes if our group schedule doesn’t work for you, or if you prefer working one-on-one with our trainers. Private classes are available on any weekday before 6pm, by appointment.

CONFUSED?
If you’re not sure whether our training style is right for you, or you just want to take a look and see what we’re all about, please stop in and observe any of our group classes. Watch what we do. Ask questions. We’re looking forward to having you!

Requirement: Puppy Basics

Cost: $210

This is the last package of our Puppy Series.  You will take everything you have learned during your previous classes and take it outside into  public settings and situations. Each week you will go into a new location and work your dog through new and exciting situations. By now you have build a strong bond and relationship with your puppy and you will go through a test and graduate from our Puppy Program by the end of the Program.

ENROLLMENT

To get enrolled into the Puppy Practical you have to go through the Puppy Basics Class first.

Class 1
-Generalizing Place
-Sit or Down Stay

Class 2
-Leash Pressure
-Friendly Meet and Greets

Class 3
-Door Manners
-Jumping

Class 4
-Food Refusal with Bed Games
-Leave It

Class 5
-Recall
-1 Minute out of sight stay

Class 6
-Friendly Meet and Greets
-Jumping

Class 7
– GRADUATION

For Puppies from 8-14 weeks

Cost: $100

What you need:

• 4ft Leash
• Clicker/Marker Word
• Lots of yummy treats

Puppy Manners ( a 4 week class/not on drop in basis) is about how to live with your puppy. It covers crate training, potty schedule, biting, jumping and how to properly manage your puppy. This is not an obedience class. This is a “How to live with your new puppy” class.

ENROLLMENT
Please fill in our online questionnaire, download, print, and carefully complete the Training Agreement and Liability Waiver below. If you don’t have a printer, you’re welcome to stop in during normal training hours (see above) and pick up a print copy of our enrollment packet.

• Online Dog Questionnaire
• Training Agreement
• Waiver & Release of Liability

Class 1

• Crate Training
• House Breaking
• Eye Contact/Clicker Training/Engagement
• Consistency with words

Class 2

• Biting and Jumping
• How to hold the leash and treat

Class 3

• Luring
• Leash Walking

Class 4

• Teaching to give space
• Intro to place

For more information please send us a message.

Disclaimer: We primarily train light Mobility, Psychiatric Service Dogs as well as Seizure Response Dogs.

ENROLLMENT
Please fill in our online questionnaire, download, print, and carefully complete the Training Agreement and Liability Waiver below. If you don’t have a printer, you’re welcome to stop in during normal training hours (see above) and pick up a print copy of our enrollment packet.

• Online Dog Questionnaire
• Training Agreement
• Waiver & Release of Liability

Pre-Requesites:
Dog should not exceed two and a half years of age and has to pass the initial evaluation. Your dog has to go through Basic Obedience, Advanced Obedience and pass a Temperament Test before he/she can go through our Public Access Test.

Amount of Training: a “Canine College” Service Dog requires a minimum of 250 hours of training over the period of at least 10 months or more. At least 35 hours should be devoted to public outings to prepare the dog to work in public settings obediently.

Obedience Training and Basic Manners:  your Service Dog must master the following skills:

• Sit (under any distractions)
• Down (under any distractions)
• Stand
• Stay
• Come (including a dropped leash recall)
• Heel
• Place (tucking under a chair, table, or anywhere else in public)
• Most of all a Service Dog should have manners

1. No aggressive behaviors towards animals or humans meaning: no fear aggression, no biting, reactivity, snarling, snapping, growling or lunging at them while working in public settings.
2.  Your dog shouldn’t solicit any food nor pets from people while being on the job.
3. Your dog should ignore any food on the ground, or dropped within the vicinity of the dog while working in a public setting
4. Your dog should not sniff people, intrude another dogs space nor sniff any merchandise in public
5. Your dog should be well socialized and not show any fear of lights, sounds or sudden changes while in a public setting
6. No unnecessary unruly behaviors or vocalization while working in a public setting, your dog must be able to work calmly on a leash without being a nuisance.
7. No urinating or pooping unless you specifically take the dog for a potty break
8. ALL FOUR ON THE GROUND!

Task Training: Your dog must be individually trained to perform at least 3 identifiable tasks on command, hand signal or cue that directly mitigates your disability i.e. retrieving, two way hearing alert, blocking, guiding, medical alert, seizure response etc.
Spontaneous behavior or Emotional Support is not considered a task. Your dog must be reliably trained to exhibit an individually trained task.

Training Records: You will have to keep Training Records to track your hours. Training Records can be downloaded here:  Public Access Training Log

Training Tools: You are allowed to train and test with the training tool of your choice.

You just got home from work and walk through the door. You can see the first piddle and pile of poop in the hallway. Toilet-paper is all over the place, a trashbag halfway dragged through the living room, your underwear chewed up and a plant knocked over. Your brand new couch has a hole chewed into the armrest and your blinds are torn down. Your 4 month old puppy comes running from the bedroom and jumps all over you, scratching your arms with those razor sharp needle claws. He’s excited to see you and does not understand why all of a sudden you get angry and push his nose into the poop and pee.

You go online and ask for help, some suggest to crate train your puppy but you don’t feel comfortable to put your puppy up for 6+ hours. Other suggest a dog walker, but your puppy doesn’t walk very well on a leash and you don’t like when a stranger comes into your house anyways.

So you get some hard bones and antlers, those are durable and should occupy your puppy throughout the day. You also lock your puppy into the bathroom since there isn’t much he could destroy. When you get home everything seems to be fine and it’s easy to clean up the pee and poop since the bathroom has tile floors. You can see the scratch marks on the door and the corner has been chewed on. Three days later you get a noise complaint and there now is a small hole in the door.

You don’t crate your puppy over night either. He’s allowed to sleep in bed with you, but he’s restless, pacing all over the place, whining and is trying to get your attention by constantly nudging and pawing you. But again, crating is for lazy people. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to be one of “those” people that just lock a puppy up.

When you sit on the couch he’s still biting your hands and legs. You push him away and yelp “Ouch”, that’s supposed to help with the biting.

A month later there is a hole in your bathroom door and your puppy has chewed up the couch, your brand new shoes, through the TV cable, gone through the trash, and probably eaten half a bag of coffee beans and chocolate that was on the counter. Your comforter is shredded, your pillow has been peed on and your puppy is standing in front of you trying to throw up. You have to call the vet and if they can’t pump the stomach you are likely looking at a couple thousand dollars in surgery.

These are the type of stories that we get to hear on a daily basis. People have tried to crate their puppy but given up after the first two nights because the puppy wouldn’t stop crying. Instead of waiting the puppy out, or trying a different approach they gave up on the crate and give the puppy too much freedom which almost always ends up with a destroyed house and/or vet visit and in some cases even death due to the puppy having ingested something toxic.

Instead of giving into the puppy here are some tips to make crate training a little easier:

• You need the right size crate. Your crate shouldn’t be too small or too big. Your puppy should be comfortable enough to stand up, turn around and lay comfortably down. If you have a large crate, use the divider.
• Keep the crate in the main living area. It’s much easier to get a puppy used to the crate if they can still see and hear us. Now, the pup is still going to cry in the beginning but it shouldn’t last as long as it would if the pup was entire secluded from the family.
• Feed your puppy in the crate. I do things a little different. For the first week my puppies don’t get normal meals. Instead I ration the meals and everytime they come back from a potty break or after I’ve worked with them, I toss a handfull of food into the crate. That immensely raises the value of the crate.
• Crate your puppy in the car whenever you take them along for a ride.  Your puppy learns that there is value in the crate. The easiest way to get a puppy used to the crate is to crate them whenever you take them on car rides.
• Play Crate Games from Susan Garrett with your puppy. You can buy her DVD online and it’s an invaluable training tool to not only build value in the crate but also patience and impulse control in your puppy.

Don’t feel bad to manage your puppy. Whether your are home or not doesn’t matter.  If your puppy is out of control, super bitey and overall obnoxious, take them out of the situation. Put them up. Utilize the crate to your advantage. If your puppy is just 10-12 weeks old, pushing them away from you isn’t going to help the situation, they only come back harder. So don’t feel bad to utilize the crate and manage the puppy. It not only protects your household good but also the puppy. Most puppies can’t handle the amount of freedom you are giving them. They are not adult dogs. If they are bored, they’ll have a party and destroy your entire house and themselves in the process. If you have two puppies of the same age, it’s going to be an even harder time to keep control over the situation. Your puppies will feed off of each other and have a party. They won’t pay much attention to you since they have each other. So you have to crate train and sometimes rotate them in and out of the crate to build a relationship with them. They will also need individual experiences so you won’t have dogs that later suffer from litter mate syndrome.

There is an epidemic in this country and that epidemic is called “Service Dogs”. It’s become fashionable to have one and there are a lot of misconceptions and misinformation out there about Service Dogs. So what is a Service Dog?

Under the ADA, a service animal is defined as a dog that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability. The task(s) performed by the dog must be directly related to the person’s disability.

A pet dog should not be “turned into a Service Dog” just because you want to make a fashion statement. There is real work involved with building a Service Dog. If I could choose whether or not I truly need a Service Dog, I’d go without one. I wish I could walk without crutches for even 1/4 of a mile, walk down stairs by myself and pick up things that I have dropped. It took years of hard work to get my dog where he is today and it never stops. His training has to be maintained regularly.

What tasks does my Service Dog provide:

• • Blocking
  • Counter Balance
  • Momentum Pull
  • Opening Drawers and getting Medication
  • Opening Doors
  • Retrieval of any dropped item or directed retrieves

The following video shows my Service Dogs behavior, public access obedience and task training:

In situations where it is not obvious that the dog is a service animal, staff may ask only two specific questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability? and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform? Staff are not allowed to request any documentation for the dog, require that the dog demonstrate its task, or inquire about the nature of the person’s disability.

While there is no official certification or registration, businesses are absolutely allowed to ask questions. They can ask you whether or not your dog is a Service Animal and what the dog does to mitigate your disability. That being said, the law does invite people to commit Service Dog Fraud. In case your dog is unruly, a nuisance or not housebroken, the business is within it’s right to remove your dog.

A service animal may not be excluded based on assumptions or stereotypes about the animal’s breed or how the animal might behave. However, if a particular service animal behaves in a way that poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others, has a history of such behavior, or is not under the control of the handler, that animal may be excluded. If an animal is excluded for such reasons, staff must still offer their goods or services to the person without the animal present.

Furthermore, emotional support and comforting is not considered a task. If all your dog does is to comfort you, that’s what an Emotional Support Dog is for. Service Dogs are specifically task trained to mitigate ones disability.

The dog must be trained to take a specific action when needed to assist the person with a disability. For example, a person with diabetes may have a dog that is trained to alert him when his blood sugar reaches high or low levels. A person with depression may have a dog that is trained to remind her to take her medication. Or, a person who has epilepsy may have a dog that is trained to detect the onset of a seizure and then help the person remain safe during the seizure.

Last but not least, the difference between Service Dogs, Emotional Support Dogs and Therapy Dogs. There is a lot of confusion between Therapy Dogs and Service Dogs specifically. Often times people say “I want him to be my Therapy Animal.” or “How do I train him to be my Therapy Service Dog?”

Graphic made by “Project Canine”