We are bringing the same commitment to helping people with their dogs and puppies.  Obedience training, behavior consultations, and entertaining activities with the family dog.

The in-home training program is new and exciting. It offers something for everyone if you are looking for a little direction and coaching, or you are looking for help getting the dog trained while your working and taking care of your other commitments.

We are partnering with Great Canines of Mount Airy to start “The Positive Dog Trainers” a training club in Frederick MD.  For everyone that is looking for quality group class training, to people looking for opportunities to spend quality recreational time with their dogs and puppies.

I am looking forward to working with Montgomery County Parks and Recreation to bring snifferdog sport to the community.  Snifferdog sport is a recreational activity that you can do with the family and the dog.

Give me a call or send an email anytime I’m always happy to chat about your dog!

Laura

lauratotis@gmail.com

(410)236-2788

I no longer require that students starting classes purchase specific equipment.  Sure there are things that I like and believe will make the teams learning progress faster.  I had a little epiphany when I realized that people were buying recommended equipment but never used it outside of class.  Now I tell new students that they are welcome to bring whatever equipment they have been using on their dog.  I then make a suggestion of what might work better for managing the dogs behavior and often have a tool handy so that we can experiment in the class. I find compliance is a lot better if people decide for themselves that something works.

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

Aron when she was about a day old is in the SAR vest. I like to tell people that the time to start training their puppy is as soon as it is hatched. The truth of the matter is that it is much easier to teach it right the first time then to correct bad habits once they are developed later. Along those lines if you are seeing some behaviors you are not pleased with the time to fix the problem is before it becomes an established behavior. Not that you can not teach an old dog new tricks just that you need to put a little more effort into teaching the old dogs than the new pups.

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

No the dogs are not allowed in the Clicks for Cats Class. Sam Connley and her cat Storm joined the advanced dog obedience class on their Canine Good Citizen test night. He is a remarkable cat aside from spending Thursday evenings with his owner Sam practicing cat agility (No we don’t teach cats to be agile we let them play at it and provide life enriching time with the owner.) Even more important the clicks for cats program introduces cat owners to basic trainng principles that can be used to help get their cats comfortable with travel in a cat carrier, veterinary visits, good hygiene care.  The time to start is when you have a little kitten.  Storm also hides to help train pet detection dogs, he just spent a week in Michigan at the Lost a Pet Training Camp.
The Clicks for Cats class teaches communication skills so we can tell our cats when they are doing something right. It is based primarily on free shaping techniques and operant conditioning principles.  The clicks for cats program is available as a seminar available as a weekend seminar.

The Canine Good Citizen class is usually filled with dogs that want to practice obedience skills in a practical context.  It is intended to help students prepare for the american kennel club good citizen test.  But it is really about being able to control your dog in the public so that you can do fun things with your dog.

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

We were in Michigan mid June to teach at a Man trailing seminar. While there we could not pass up the opportunity to do a little water introduction training as well. Zoey & Chewy got a ride on a pontoon boat, in my opinion a great water search dog starts with a great search dog that is comfortable on a boat. After that it is just handler skills learning to read the dog and understand the water environments effect on scent transport.  It is human nature to try to do everything at once.  If we break things down for the dogs it may seem to take a little longer initially however in the long run we will get a stronger finished product a lot more efficiently.

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

On that tangent of training dogs in “drive” I’m thinking of starting my trailing dogs a little differently. I still like footstep tracking as a concept to keep the head down but when we are putting the sequence together into trailing dog we should probably work with the “natural” behaviors the dog offers. So I started with some dogs fostering in the kennel a couple that have a tendency to go out side drop their nose to the ground and sniff along. Also dogs that either love other dogs or cats or people depending on what we are going to teach them to find. I decided it is a whole lot easier to let the dog do what he would do anyway than force him to perform some behavior I want him to do. If he wants to find people anyway it is a lot easier for me to say here is the rule you can do what you want as long as you follow my rules. Than to it is for me to take the “by golly you are going to do this and you will like it” attitude. We are going to use a back chaining technique where we start at the last step the dog is getting rewarded at the subject. Then I move him a little distance away show him something that smells like the subject and let him go play with her again. I repeat until he understands that smelling the article starts the game. Next I’ll do the same thing with different people then have several people there let him smell the article of the only person that will play with him. Following are some photos of Bubba going through the beginning sequence we don’t have room for pictures of every step But you can fill in the blanks.

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

We take Bubba Just a few feet away get him to “mark” the Item from A.C. then let him play so we introduce the start of the game and show the dog who we want him to find in order to play with her. The actual track is whopping two feet long, but so what, distance is one of the variables we will add.   There are more photos of Bubba starting trailing at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauratotis/ 

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

Bubba is actively searching for A.C. Notice his head is a little high for a sport tracking dog, but if we age the track a little he will start to keep it down. It is important that we focus on the dog doing the job not on successfully not how the dog looks doing the job when we are training working not sport dogs.  Sport tracking is comparing one that looks better than another. No one cares how a working search dog looks as long as he is able to produce results.  Some variables we need to add, different age tracks, different environments, Turns are all ready here since she went around the front of the car to hide.

If you want to train your dog for AKC tracking find someone to work with that is successful training their dog for AKC tracking.  If you want a sch. title on your tracking dog find a competent sch. trainer.  If you want to train your dog for scent detection find a trainer that has a successful track record training real working detection dogs. If it sounds like I am on a soap box than I probably am.  Particularly in the lost pet detection area there are a lot of folks that decided they can make a  quick buck in the field.  Time and again we see heartbreaking cases where misinformation is worse than no information at all.

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Originally uploaded by Laura & the pack.

Developing Fifi’s play drive into a reward system that we can use to teach her obedience and to reward search dog skills. I introduced her to cadaver training aids she is quite excited about the whole working idea. Fifi needs a home she is a Katrina dog I have been fostering. At first we were hoping to locate her owner, now we will be happy to find her a great home.