Balanced Training
Pawlished believes in training every dog in front of them at the pace and with the tools they require to succeed.
Because of this, Pawlished is concerned "Balanced Training", meaning we use all 4 learning quadrants.
Our Balanced Training approach is so simple, it's common sense.
We believe your dog must learn both "YES" AND "NO" to be successful in navigating their choices.
It's only fair to address both sides of the spectrum, so that our dogs clearly know when they are right versus when they are wrong.
YES
When your dog does a desired behavior, we will reward it with physical and verbal praise. That's not to say that we won't use treats during training, but we don't want to create dogs who are dependent on treats to preform tasks. What happens when you don't have a treat, and your dog races out the door? Are the consistent enough, without food present, to do what you've asked? Or will your dog decide that they'll complete that come command when they feel like it? Pawlished is looking for consistency and dependability in commands. Treats have their place in training. They have value and can increase a dog's drive, engagement, and help to reinforce work. But Pawlished strongly believes that all dogs must be able to work when there is no food offering present, too.
NO
When your dog does an undesired behavior, chances are that you not only want to stop it while it's happening, but you also want to deter it from making the same choice in the future. I'm going to let you in on a little secret... ignoring those poor choices will not make them disappear. In fact, your dog may take that as a sign that it's okay to continue. Let's address those moments instead with a "correction". There are THOUSANDS of methods you can use to correct a dog. Most of them are inappropriate. Owners often come to us confused about what type of a correction is appropriate. We hear about corrections that are too harsh and too soft every day.
We prefer spray bottles, shaker cans, and leash corrections. Another secret? Timing and sequencing are everything! You can't successfully correct a dog without telling them why it happened and what a better option would be! Then we get back to the good stuff, the YES!
We look forward to explaining this in more detail to you during your free evaluation.
Methodologies
You've probably discovered that there are quite a few ways to train a dog. You've probably also noticed that everyone believes that their way is the best way too. Unfortunately, there is a lot of division in the dog training world. The ones suffering from this discourse, ultimately, are the dogs. There is no single right way. Every dog is different. Every trainer is different. Every issue we bump into may have multiple ways to be resolved. We will use the tools that you and your dog need to get the results that you are looking for. We are open to using buckle collars, martingale collars, slip chain collars, prong collars, e-collars, harnesses, standard leashes, extended leashes, food, place mats, crates, muzzles, toys, clickers, etc. Our job is to offer you solutions to the behaviors you dislike while helping you to create good behavior patterns that you do like. The reason why we attend so many conferences and workshops annually from trainers in every faction of the industry, is to continue learning from the best. This field is always evolving. There is always a more common sense, more humane, easier to understand way coming on the horizon, and we work hard to make sure that we understand as many of those methodologies as possible to be able to bring them back to you and apply them to your situations.
In conjunction with our obedience training and behavioral modification tactics, an integral part of our training philosophy stems from "Training Between the Ears" (TBTE). TBTE was developed by our colleague, Mark McCabe. TBTE uses primarily reward and relaxation strategies to change the emotional state of dogs and help them moderate their own emotions. The techniques aim to build relationships with your dog by removing conflict, develop your dog’s self-motivation though success seeking behaviors, and changing your dog’s perception of the surrounding world so they are emotionally more relaxed and stable, and therefore resilient to external stressors.
Here is the link to their teachable website if you're interested in taking their courses directly:
https://tbte.teachable.com/?affcode=278332_o2n1f4us
On top of training, we believe that a healthy dog has the best chance of succeeding in their behavioral journey. We love working with vets in the area to create a plan that will work best for you. We hope that, that includes getting dogs off of anxiety medication when appropriate. We also believe that what your dog eats impacts how they behave. For that reason, we team with local nutrition consultants when necessary and have become an affiliate with Volhard Dog Nutrition to make sure that our clients have access to the best food in the country.
