Your dog knows what to do.

At least, you’re pretty sure they do.

You taught sit, down, stay, come, leave it. Maybe they’re downright impressive in the living room, or even obedience class!

Aaaand then you try to use those cues in real life. For, you know, the actual reason you trained them in the first place.

Suddenly your beautiful recall disappears because there’s another dog nearby. Loose leash walking lasts about three seconds.  “Leave it” works great with the boring training setup you’ve practiced 700 times, but apparently doesn’t apply to the mystery chicken bone on the sidewalk.

Or maybe your dog’s skills seem dependent on whether you have food.

Treat in hand? Star student! No treats in sight? Apparently your dog has never heard the word “sit” before in their life.

And so you start wondering:

Does she actually know this and just not care?

Is he stubborn?

Does she only listen when she feels like it?

Have I accidentally taught him that he only has to listen when I have treats?

Am I seriously supposed to carry chicken around for the rest of his life?

Nah.

The truth is that teaching your dog what a cue means is only the beginning of the training process.

You may already know that, though.

“Way ahead of you, Jake. Putting a behavior on cue is step one, blah blah blah I get it. You have to proof it, too.  I’ve practiced adding distractions and training in a variety of places.”

And that’s great! But if it hasn’t really worked and you still get stuck in “he knows it he just doesn’t do it,” there’s more to the proofing process than you’ve probably taken into consideration. And that isn’t your fault; proofing is often discussed in a pretty narrow context. The Three D’s. Systematically adding distance, duration, distraction, etc.

But we’d argue that proofing needs to be much bigger and broader than that. Getting a whole entire sentient being – with their own feelings, priorities, desires, baggage, and limitations – to do something on demand, whenever and wherever, is complicated. 

This workshop looks at proofing through a much wider lens. We’ll walk you through a more holistic approach to building reliability. An approach that allows for the fact that dogs are just as complicated, messy, and imperfect as the rest of us.