RING A DING MY BELL!:   ​

You can teach pups to ask to go outdoors in the following way. You can find a large jingle bell and put it on a string suspended from the doorknob of the exit you are using.

Grab your clicker and some great little treats. Bring the pup to the door, and lure his little nose to touch the bell.

​You may have to do something extraordinary to get him to feel the bell. As soon as he touches the bell, click and treat. Repeat for 10 deliberate touches.

Now, only click and treat for more complex touches on the bell until you are getting a consistent jingle when he whacks the bell with his nose.

In the next session, have him ring the bell again, click and treat, open the door, and then immediately take him outside to his designated area for elimination.

Do this several times over several days, until he gets the idea that ringing the bell means a trip to the elimination spot.

You should always go to the elimination spot first and require an elimination before any playtime is allowed outdoors.
Phone: Kat 423-552-1416

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All Creatures Country Club does Board & Train for you.  The selection is in one, two, or three weeks to help you get pup under control.

If you are having issues with an out of control "snotty" dog, this requires special handling and reprogramming and is not at this level ready for Board & Train.  Look into our Private In-Home Training at this point in time and an assessment at our Training Center may be required before proceeding.

Your dog will be worked at least three sessions per day while in kennel Board & Train.  He will progress at his own rate, for a one week course, he will be exposed to 17 behaviors and working them on cue in low level distraction.

At the end of the week you will be required to come to the training center and we will transfer the accomplished cues with your dog to you as the handler.  

You and pup return home, and you need to be on a schedule of working with your dogs newly installed cues on a daily basis for a couple of weeks, then you can start to tone it down as he becomes proficient with you and the home environment.

It doesn't matter what the age of the dog is, inappropriate elimination is only about you.  The dog is being rewarded because he no longer has to go.

To create better control of the situation, let's go back to the very basics.  It doesn't matter what the age of the dog is, so long as the dog is healthy and ambulatory.

Until you get things going in the proper direction, the best thing is to confine the dog.  This means a crate.  

Crates are great things, dogs love them if you haven't abused the crate.

So, if you can't be paying attention to what the dog is doing because you are busy, or the whole family has their heads in the boob-tube, crate the dog.

Do not crate any dog for longer than four hours at a time, because a properly sized crate is for sleeping, not living.

The easiest part is getting the dog outdoors, they love to be outside if you are with them.  

Hint number one! Go outside with them, and I don't care what the weather is or how you happen to be dressed.                               Go Outside Together.

Now, Stay Outside until you get elimination, then an additional two, TWO, minutes doing something besides running back into the house!  

Hint number two! When the dog eliminates and you race his butt back into the house immediately, you will find yourself out there for hours on end waiting for elimination. BECAUSE you just punished the dog for eliminating by taking him directly back into the house.  Don't do it!

Timing is important, so jot this down:
A.  Immediately after a nap
B.  Five minutes into a play session
C.  Ten minutes after eating
D.  First thing in the morning
E.  Last thing at night
F.  After a car ride

Well, I have covered all the times that I have to go, how about you?  Dog is the same.  Puppies even more so.

Can't say enough about Rewards.  Some dogs like just praise, others like stroking, and still others like a special treat.

My recommendation is to start with shredded canned chicken.  This is the Ace in the Hole of rewards.  They only ever get shredded canned chicken when they eliminate outdoors.  Dog gets it!  By day three, he will drag 'your laziness' outdoors so shredded canned chicken arrives on his lips.

As soon as elimination starts:  Name it...
  Good Pee Pee
  Good Whiz
  Good Poo
  Good Potty
  Good Whatever!
Then, deliver a couple of pinches of shredded canned chicken to those lips while you are praising what just happened (naming it) to the Heavens!

Again!  Dog gets it!  By day three, he will drag "your laziness" outdoors so shredded canned chicken arrives on his lips.

This of course doesn't have to happen forever, but I would suggest a couple of weeks to drive it home.

Talk to your dog.  Your conversations will be repetitive, and that is what the dog needs to learn what you want. We speak human, they speak dog.  They are much more adept at reading our body signals than our speech, so you have to do and say the same things over and over.

I always ask:  "Do you want to go outside?"
or
"Do you want to go pee pee?"

I do this in a higher happy voice, and they race around until I get off my "dead" and onto my "dying" and get them out the door.  They love it, and so will you!

All Creatures Country Club 

For those of you who are not aware, Dwight and I support GreenePets Foster Network, Inc. and the dogs in that rescue.

We have no foster homes, so our kennels serve.

We are currently taking in dogs who have potential as K-9 officers with adequate training.

This program is extremely costly to us, as the dogs actually belong to GreenePets Foster Network, Inc., an organization that does not have any money to pay kenneling expenses while the dogs are in training.

We have a very small volunteer crew who help as much as they can, but almost all of them are holding down full time jobs as well.

We have been very fortunate to meet Scottie, and he us.  As anyone can tell you who works 12 hour days and lives with three dogs, it is really hard if you don't have a facility available to help out.  This is where we started.

And then...things started to happen.  Besides Scottie working his own dogs, and his Sunday dog club, we received an opportunity to help a couple of dogs from the West Coast that were going to loose their lives, primarily because they were Belgian Malinois, and since the Bin Laden take down, the West Coast is breeding Malinois like popcorn pops.

You wouldn't think that breeding them was a bad idea, except for one thing.  These dogs have been bred for an enormous amount of time as working class dogs.  They normally do not make great family pets, unless you have a wonderful sense of humor, enormous energy, and don't care about stuff in your house, car, truck, other pets, sometimes children, visitors, or anywhere/thing else they can decide to investigate, disassemble, or flat out destroy.               This is all in the day of a Maligator...