Yooper Paws of Love is dedicated to providing training with love to you and your 4-legged friend! My mission as a trainer is to EDUCATE owners to ENGAGE better with their dogs to EMPOWER them to function as an effective team together. As a trainer, I help families & their dogs learn to enjoy each other’s company by developing a teamwork and games based approach to dog training that is as individualized as the family I’m helping!
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Training Tools

Scheduling
ATTENTION
Azul will be having his neuter surgery on Oct 5th so I've disabled my automatic scheduling system for 10 days.

Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Distracted Dog Days

Reinforcement Workshop

Sunday, September 17, 2023
Getting Help for Your Crazy Canine Adolescent!

Monday, September 11, 2023
September Plans
September Struggles & Strategies Plans at the Yooper Paws Training Center
This month we will looking at many common struggles faced by dog owners and people working to train their own service dogs. And with all common struggles, there are some common strategies. We posted quite a few last year during the September Theme of the Month, and we are going to continue to expand that list of common struggles.
- We will be adding blogposts about Self Regulation in our dogs and hopefully highlight some new ways to help our dogs learn to control their impulses a bit better. This includes one of the most common struggles for dog owners...barking!
- We hope to put the final touches on our Challenging Behaviors Series of Webinars with a Lunch & Learn Zoom Session on Understanding Functional Reinforcement September 27th beginning at 12:00PM Central. This will be a free webinar for 30 days before we move it into the paid webinar files. Register Here!
- We will starting new projects with our Wednesday Group Walks!
- The Morning Group will be adding in new environments with more people distractions such as parks, neighborhoods, and public spaces. This takes distractions to another level!
- The Evening Group will be moving from Wednesday to Tuesday and begin learning about and practicing skills involved in walking multiple dogs from the same house at the same time. This takes leash management skills to another level!
- We have some great strategies planned for our Service Dog Teams!
- Donna Hill will be joining the Service Dog Handler Chat on Sept 19th at 1:00 PM Central to discuss Ethics in the SD Community.
- We have the Sight Based Medical Alerts Class beginning on Sept 19th with the Scent Based Medical Alerts Class beginning on Oct 2nd. Teaching Medical Alerts is often one of the biggest struggles for SD Teams!
- We have our group of Super Sniffers in the Yooper Paws Nosework Club that will be focusing on searching in outdoor spaces which includes struggles with changes due to wind, surface type, competing smells, etc. Plus we will be adding some Simple Sniffers for teams that are just starting out with Nosework.
- Back to School Classes are starting back up!
- Positively Puppy Paws Class will be on Thursdays at 6:00 PM beginning on September 21st.
- FAD Family Pets for previous Puppy Paws Clients will be on Mondays at 7:00 PM beginning on September 18th. I'm thinking about scheduling a FAD Family Pets Beginner Class, so please let me know if your interested!
- Last but not least, we hope to dive into the topic of determining our dog's individual strengths and how we can alter training to make it easier for our dogs to learn while having fun.

Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Understanding Canine Needs
Understanding Canine Needs
I think we all know that puppy needs are different then adult dog needs, smaller breed needs are different then larger dog needs, and different breeds sometimes have different needs. I can roll off a list of dog needs a mile long but they all come down to these 3 categories; physical needs, emotional needs, and mental needs.
Physical needs include things such as food, water, shelter/safe space to rest, place to go potty, exercise needs, vet care, etc.
Emotional needs include things such as feeling safe, calm, and happy, social experiences, freedom from shame, freedom from threats, etc.
Mental needs include things such as participating in training sessions, playing games with friends, doing enrichment puzzles, sniffing the environment, etc.
Understanding your dog's needs is the first step!
Getting Help!
People seek training help to change at least one behavior, such as pulling on the leash. There really is no need to contact a trainer if your dog is perfect. Owning a dog almost always has challenges of some sorts. Even dog trainers have other dog trainers that they go to for help.Gone are the days, at least for most of us, where we simply punish the behaviors we don't like. Thankfully dog owners don't come to Yooper Paws because they want to learn how to punish their dog more effectively! If that's their goal, owners quickly learn they are in the wrong place because that's not what I teach. I help dog owners look at the big picture of the behavior that is bothering them.
A dog who barks is trying to accomplish something. They may bark because they see something scary/exciting, or to tell a perceived intruder to get back or give them space, or alert their owners to a potential threat. They may bark simply because it makes them feel good. I'm going to help you determine what the dog is trying to accomplish with that barking behavior.
Most of the time that leads us back to a need that isn't currently being met. Perhaps the dog feels unsafe in the environment, an emotional need. Perhaps the dog is bored from being home all day, needs physical activity or mental stimulation. There are basically endless possibilities as to what your dog needs in any given situation.
When I say that there is a need that is unmet, that is not intended to blame the owner for not taking proper care of their dog! On the contrary, if an owner walks into Yooper Paws seeking my help, I know you are doing your best to provide everything your dog needs. I'm searching through your dog's needs based on breed, age, physical health, daily routine, other family members that may help provide needs, and other information so that I can find the best way to help you. When we find needs that are unmet and brainstorm solutions, we can often change challenging behavior.
Canine Needs Are Different For Every Dog!
Azul and Roz are very different dogs! Both are very confident, resilient and easy to please, but they both have very different needs. They both need food, but Azul is more likely to eat a bigger breakfast while Roz prefers a bigger supper. They both need exercise, but Roz prefers a much faster pace while Azul likes to take it slow. They both need to go potty, but Azul will go anywhere and Roz is more selective. You see, some basic needs are the same for every dog, but still need some individualization.Azul can be found spending his morning watching the world go by; at the office on his tie out, at home in the backyard, or laying in bed looking out the window. Before or after lunch Azul wants an adventure. He prefers a sniff-a-bout where he can smell p-mail, but he also enjoys a service dog adventure too. He takes a nice afternoon nap, and enjoys some type of play before dinner. His evening is spent exploring or relaxing in the backyard. Azul is pretty laid back and easy going with lots of relaxation time in different environments with just a bit of fun and adventure thrown into his day.
Azul likes to nap and watch the world go by from his favorite places that are in sight of me but not really close to me.

Sunday, August 20, 2023
Slow is Fast, Fast is Slow in Dog Training
Quick fixes often provide a temporary fix to any problem! But if you want real results, you'll work toward making slow steady progress based your dog's needs!
Slow in Adding Cues
Slow in Building Duration & Delayed Reinforcement
For many of us, we get stuck with our eyes on the prize or the end goal. We set or goals or see a list of things we want to accomplish and we jump straight there or move rapidly toward the goal. The faster we move in dog training, the greater the chances we have for struggles to set in. When we struggle is when we tend to look for ways to correct or punish the dog. Those harsher corrections based training can be totally avoided if we just slow down and move at the dog's speed. Each dog processes things a bit differently, so one dog might learn a basic concept more easily and progress rapidly while another dog needs a bit more practice and smaller baby steps in training.If you follow my FB page, you've seen picts and reference to the Husky Boys, which are 3 brothers that I've been working with since they were quite young. While the genetics of these pups came from the same place as littermates that live in the same household, they are all very individualized. Sammy moves at slower pace, thinking before he does anything but catches on very quickly. Eli needs a bit more time to look around and see what others are doing which means he kinda just goes with the flow wherever he can and is more easily distractable. Eli doesn't like to make mistakes, so he likes to make sure he knows what your asking for before he attempts to do it. Then there's Charlee! LOL Charlee learns new behaviors real quick, but he also forgets new behaviors real quick. He's typically first to respond, but that means he will keep throwing out random behaviors that you've asked for in the past hoping that something will eventually earn him the cookie. When it comes to navigating the environment, Charlee is the type to rush in guns a blazing or ready to handle anything. But when it comes to strangers, Charlee is more likely to sit back and see what his brothers or Roz do. Sammy the slower paced one is more eager to make friends with everyone, both human and dog.
You may be wondering what an evaluation of the Husky Brothers has to do with training cues. This is a unique situation where all 3 dogs have the same genetics and live in the same house so they get the same amount of exposure to the world, the same amount of training time and exercise, and have the same daily household routine. Yet when they are learning new skills they need a bit of a different approach. Slower paced Sammy, even though he wants to always be right in the behavior he offers, can actually learn more quickly with some delayed reinforcement. When we teach heel we start with reinforcing getting in position, then one step, then two steps, 3 steps, 5 steps, 10 steps, etc. Sammy moves through those steps more rapidly being successful at 10 steps rather quickly. Eli on the other hand needs a bit more reinforcement along the way to keep him focused meaning he spent a ton more time practicing at 5 steps then Sammy needed. Eli needed that reinforcement more rapidly or he lost focus. Charlee learned the cue much more rapidly for heel, yet he's still the one the struggles with it the most because if the rate of reinforcement is spread out too far, Charlee will start throwing out other behaviors like jumping, barking, or switching sides in an attempt to earn faster reinforcement.
This individualized difference is why we don't add cues until the dog is doing well with the behavior. Otherwise we run the risk of giving the cue and the dog not being able to do the behavior because they are distracted, bored, frustrated, or simply don't know what that cue means yet. There is another common saying, "Name it when you love it!" which basically means, don't add the cue until the behavior is exactly what you want your dog to be doing. This might only take 1-3 training sessions for some dogs while it takes 4-6 for others. Our puppy class is designed to help the owner and puppy make as much progress as possible without rushing them to hit a deadline or achieve a hard and fast standard by the end of the 6 sessions. The beauty of that is, most puppies that complete the class can easily exceed the national standards that are widely accepted for those basic behaviors plus the owners then know how to continue to increase those skills in a wide variety of environments and around distractions.
Slow in Adding New Distractions & New Environments

Sunday, August 13, 2023
Did you Do Your Homework?
How many times have you put off doing your homework?
Whether you are looking at homework for school, house cleaning, yard work, even writing blogs for your dog training page...humans tend to get bogged down with a never ending list of things we need to accomplish. Many look at dog training as a never-ending job that requires work. I'm hoping with this blog to challenge how we as people look at the job of training our dogs!
- Training your dog should be fun and enjoyable! Very few people I've known have actually enjoyed doing homework, while most people hate doing homework.
- Training your dog should fit easily in your day! People commonly struggle with the act of getting started doing a job, saving it until they get the whole job done at once without interruption. Yet training in mini-sessions throughout the normal course of your day is much better for you and your dog.
- Training your dog should be ever changing! There may be some things that we do in our day with our dog that is best on a routine such as meals, potty outings, etc. But when it comes to training new things we need to flexible based on other activities in our day. If you've had a bad day, you should do something more relaxing or something you love with your dog instead of focusing on a training plan. However if you've had an amazing day, you may be able to do more with your dog on that day. Some people work during the week and have weekends off, thus training would look different during the week than it does the weekend. As a Canine Coach, I'm not there with you every day to tell you what you should be focusing on for that day! However, I often give my clients some great activities to do on the rainy days or days you simply can't do training for some reason.
- Training your dog should be like telling the story. There isn't a specific start/stop to the action that takes place, but more like new chapters that build on what has happened previously and continue to progress into new adventures and activities. You don't simply teach your dog to hold a stay in one training session, or even one training session a day for a month. You start with a simple 1-2 second stay in a low distraction environment and gradually build up the distance, duration, and distractions involving that skill. Especially if you start training with a puppy! The expectation for a 6 month old puppy is that you can back of 5 steps and return to your puppy to deliver reinforcement. Around 12 months that expectation would then increase to 10 steps away with a pause before returning. And the expectation for an adult is that you can back away 20 steps. Yet we all know dogs that can hold a stay much longer than that, right! That's because the more practice you have doing a skill, the better you get and the same is true for our dogs. The skill of holding a stay is built up over time as the dog and owner develop teamwork together. No matter how old a dog gets, you can still reinforce and build the skill of stay because the story never ends.
- Training your dog should happen in a wide variety of environments. It's true that when training a very new skill, you need to start at home or a low distraction environment. But training can't end there. As the story progresses, we need to slowly build in more and more environments. Let's look at loose leash walking for a moment. You start with training at home, walking through the house, then move out into your driveway, perhaps the backyard, perhaps up and down the sidewalk in front of your house all before trying to walk around the block. Then your walking world slowly expands to more and more environments based on where you live. With a puppy we kind of naturally do this in an attempt to keep the puppy safe. So many people struggle with leash walking with older dogs simply because the environment is too distracting and the work hasn't happened yet to build up to these super fun environments. (I'm really guilty of this too!) Since training in new environments needs to build up slowly, we may not always be able to get to the next environment as quickly as we'd like. Winters are harsh in my area making outdoor walking more challenging which means training any sorts of outdoor leash manners need to go on hold for a few months. Service Dog in Training Rosalind is working on practicing skills in new environments, but because of the busy Training Center schedule, having time to get her into the new environments is challenging.
- Do we need to slow down the training or can we perhaps speed up?
- Do we need to change the games we are playing to make it easier for the dog to learn or make it more challenging to keep the dog engaged?
- Do we need to hold of on training for awhile to let your dog recover from an injury or grow up a bit? Or perhaps we need to meet more often or check in with each other between sessions?
When do I give out homework?

Friday, August 11, 2023
Obstacle Course Games
Games Based Training involves coaching and concepts instead of dominance based obedience.
What are Canine Coaches
Building Obstacle Courses
Obstacle Course to Teach Cues
Canine Coaches are happy to help!

Wednesday, August 9, 2023
Games Help Distracted & Fearful Dogs
Games Help Distracted Dogs
These 3 dogs (Azul, Roz, & Maverick) are all Service Dogs which means they need to be able to focus on the job no matter what is happening around them. Many dogs are easily distracted in the presence of other dogs. Games such in this picture can help dogs learn to focus around distractions. This is a calming game to help the dogs relax after a play session. Their job is to stay on their station and listen for their name to be called to release them. It may sound simple, but it's not easy for dogs that were just racing around.
Games can be set up differently depending on your overall goal. You can set up something with lots of movement if you want to get your dog responding to cues more rapidly or your can set up something with very little movement if you want your dog to calm down. For dogs that struggle with rebounding after something really exciting or fearful, you can design games that start fast and slowly switch tracks to calmer, slower activities.
Often people get stuck on thinking a dog will rest when they get tired, then give dogs more exercise when bad behaviors start to happen. Sometimes a puppy chewing on your shoes needs a walk or play time, but sometimes that puppy chewing on your shoes really needs a nap but does know yet how to settle. Just like children, dog's do not come pre-installed with an off switch. Thankfully games can be used to help teach a dog calming behaviors that they can do without destroying the house. You wouldn't go on a roller coaster or something really exciting that gets your adrenaline up, then simply lay down for a nap. It's not really fair to expect our dogs to do that on their own either.
As in the picture above, the dogs became really aroused or excited by playing with each other. They played roughly 20 minutes in the Go-Go-Go mindset. When they'd had enough, they came to me for human interaction. All 3 dogs followed me around the Training Center while I gathered the stations. This took them from a running state of adrenaline rush down to a slower but still moving state of mind. Once the stations were set up, they all chose their own station. I started with simply asking them all to come to me for a treat, then get on a station for a treat, having them all move back forth. Then we slowly transitioned to everyone holding their position until their name was called to come get a treat and return to their station. All of this was taught with previous games starting with 1 dog at a time.
This brings me to another point in why we need to use games for training, No matter what game you set up, there is always a way to make it slightly harder, slightly more entertaining, slightly more reinforcing for the dog. Games always start simple and build up! Watch this cone game with Azul to see how we start with a simple Go Around.
In this Movement Puzzle the frisbees represent a start and stop place where reinforcement will be delivered. The cones start out really close together so Azul can learn the basics of going around. Then the cones start to move out further apart to work on the concept of working at greater distances. Azul struggles when I change things to quickly, so I have to change my game set up to make it easier. This meant I had to get another cone to fill the empty space so he didn't take a short cut. Azul already knows the cue to go around but he's never played this game before so he's moving slowly. At the end Azul tells me he is done with this game by going in between my legs. This tells me he wants to play his favorite game of moving together as a team with Azul standing between my legs. We are a bit out of camera range for this game, but I think you can tell what we are doing.
Games Help Fearful Dogs
When Lana first came into the Yooper Paws Training Center she was extremely scared, timid and barky! Like many owners, Lana's person didn't quite know what she was getting into when she agreed to give Lana a home. While Lana's person knew a great deal about training Aussies, she needed help figuring out how to deal with the fearfulness. We spent 6 sessions building up Lana's confidence around other people and dogs, teaching Lana how to process the threats in the environment better and how to communicate her needs to her person. Lana's person learned to read Lana's micro movements to better predict when Lana would feel the need to lash out in a barking frenzy. Helping Lana feel safe, calm, and happy in the environment was our goal.
Lana and her person now join in on the Wednesday morning walks almost every week. She used to bark at the sight of one dog, and now she walks with 3-5 other dogs successfully. On our Distracted & Fearful Dog Walks, we stop to play games throughout the walk. We use games that help dogs learn to walk passed other dogs on the trail, learn about being the leader of the walk and following other dogs, explore the environment, and focus on their person when requested. Lana and her person display awesome teamwork on these walks as they support each other along the trail.
We also introduced Lana to nosework! This one thing of learning how to use her nose to find an object of interest or a specific scent has helped Lana tremendously. Lana went from barking and asking to leave the Training Center to now wanting to run into the training center for some fun. I try to always have some good things for Lana to sniff, lick, and chew when she arrives so that she can have some safe exploration time. Then we set up for our nosework session. Check out this video that shows a simple set up where Lana is trying to find the scent in a box.

Monday, August 7, 2023
Train Smarter With Games
Training Smarter, Not Harder with Games & Puzzles
When people come to their first session at the Yooper Paws Training Center, they are often surprised by our training style. I hear things like, "This is so much fun!" "This is so easy!" "All we do is play games!?!?" As positive reinforcement based trainers, we want to teach dogs what TO Do vs what NOT to Do. Playing games based on teaching skills and concepts allows us to heavily reinforce the behaviors we want. If we use reinforcement the dog wants, getting behaviors becomes much easier. Teaching in a way that both owner and dog have fun, makes learning so much easier. For those who are not familiar with Games & Concepts Based Training let me break it down a bit.
Movement Puzzles are designed to reinforce skills we want our dogs to be good at while teaching concepts that can be applied to life skills.
In this puzzle all Azul has to do is put his front paws on the trampoline and return for a treat. I start by standing really close to the trampoline and using hand targets to guide Azul back and forth. Once Azul has the idea, I slowly back away from the trampoline. This is to teach the concept of sending the dog out to do a job and returning to their handler once the job is done, creating long distance work.
This is Azul's first time doing this puzzle so he's moving pretty slow, but with a few sessions he will start to build up some speed.
For dogs that find speed and movement reinforcing, the game becomes so fun that they don't even realize they are learning.
Roz has done 4-5 sessions already so I can build distance and speed much faster with her. I can also slow down my rate of reinforcement faster with her because she already knows and loves the game.
Games based dog training allows us to repeat behaviors without acting like a drill sergeant or forcing a dog to do something they don't want to do. We can play the game using body language to guide the dog to the behavior we are after without giving any cues. Then once the behavior is well known we can associate a verbal cue to request the behavior. By training this way, we avoid punishment when our dog struggles doing a behavior they are still learning. We can reinforce a behavior that's almost correct and slowly shape that behavior to the skill level we want.
Since learning this way is fun for both owner and dog, they are more likely to practice by playing the games between sessions. And your dog trainer can always tell if you've practiced or not!
Let Yooper Paws of Love or the Crazy2Calm Canine Coaches help you learn how to set up puzzles to train the skills you want your dog to have! Email us at yooperpaws@gmail.com.
Continue to Post 2 in the Games Series to learn about helping distracted & fearful dogs with games.

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