Alpine Dog (TM)
Alpine Dog (TM)
Your first session will be a complete 60-90 minute, in person consultation here at our Alpine Dog location. I will interact with your dog and assess your dog's behavior as well as discuss with you, what your goals are for your dog and possible training plans. For behavioral modification cases, you may expect the entire consultation to be mostly or all conversation and answering detailed questions about specific issues as well as coming up with a management plan to help you move forward. If there is time left over during the consultation, we can go ahead and do some training to get you started.
I believe that the more engaged your dogs are with you, the more they want to respond to you. I train by using cle verbal cues, hand signals, treats, toys, and games to help modify behavior, correct bad habits, and teach tricks.
I will be training you as the owner, how to train your dog, so you will learn all of these techniques to use on your own. I may take the leash to work with your dog during your sessions, but you will be hands on making each of our sessions completely interactive. I can take your dog on solo sessions and transfer the information to you on what we have done, but I highly recommend being a part of each session.
I do consider breed-specific behaviors when training. This includes whether the dog was bred to hunt, pull, fight, guard, or has a strong prey drive (which you will see in most rescue dogs). Other factors include temperament, age, environment, sensitivity level, and behavior and training history. Most of my training is based on play, what drives your dog and your dog's biological needs.
I follow the saying; Be as soft as you can be, but be as firm as you must be to create a softer more cooperative mindset in the dog. I will only use as much pressure as is needed with the dog. This is especially important when working with aversive techniques such as prong collars and e collars etc. It's very easy to be unfair. I am here to teach you how to be fair to your dog so your relationship builds instead of falls apart.
VT Alpine Dog reserves the right to refer cases out to other trainers or to bring in another trainer to co-train for specific cases.
In the case of extreme weather, VT Alpine Dog reserves the right to cancel any services that would put the health and safety of ourselves and our clients at risk.
Please notify us with 24 hours for cancellations so we can accommodate our schedule to allow for other clients. The first session missed will be waived. You will be charged half a session for the second session missed and for full sessions missed there on.
Consultations will be much more detailed during the intake part of my training process. I will do a free introductory phone call in order to establish whether your case is within my scope of practice. If I need to refer you to someone that may have a more appropriate program for your dog, I have a list of several qualified trainers in the area that I work closely with. I may suggest doing a video consultation before meeting in person, to go over every detail of your case. The entire consultation will be all conversation as we need to break down every incident with your dog before beginning training. We will also discuss training plans and procedures during this meeting. We will then move forward to in-person training sessions from there.
Are you thinking about getting a puppy and don't know where to start? Do you want to rescue, or are you deciding to look for a breeder? What supplies do you absolutely need? What other things should you expect with bringing your puppy home? Do you have another dog at home that you need to integrate your puppy with? All of these questions will be answered and more! This is a one hour consultation. You have the choice in doing an in person meeting, or we can do this virtually via FaceTime or Zoom.
Click the button below to see our new puppy programs just added to our curriculum!
I have offered both weekly group classes as well as 2 hour long one day intensives. I am currently planning a third program, combining both curriculums to form a three day preschool course that includes summer socials for your puppies! Please keep an eye on our facebook page. We will announce our scheduled events there. If you'd like to get on a wait list, click on the message button on the bottom right and send us your contact info!