Three Dogs Archives • Three Dogs Training

APDT Conference 2018

Last week I spent my time in Memphis, TN for the 2018 APDT educational conference. Our conversations and workshops included:

Aggressive dogs – safety to effective treatment
Enrichment of all dogs – puppies, puzzles, cognitive games, word discrimination (can your dog be Chaser?), and imitating humans (always something new)
Even IT security – who knew?
Shelter dog training – stress, testing, music to calm, games, and my favorite, ‘…it’s not about a walk, it’s about enrichment and training…’
‘Where does your dog sleep?’ study – Answer – with their humans – maybe not in the bed, but the same room offers the most stable non destructive and lower stressed dog – I knew that 😉
And much more I didn’t see
Lori, Lisa, and Linda – Beal Street, Memphis, TN

With all that information spinning in our heads – we had to get out and have a little fun eating ribs and listening to the blues.

Did you know Three Dogs is on Yelp?

Do you use Yelp and like to write reviews? How about giving your favorite positive reinforcement dog trainer some kind words?

If you’ve never seen or heard of Yelp, it’s a really nifty site that allows users to review everything from restaurants, stores, and even your favorite positive reinforcement dog trainer. In places – like Putnam County – where traditional review outlets like Zagat’s don’t pay close attention we’ve found it to be really useful.

In fact, we tried to get a listing in Zagat’s, but when they asked what we served they seemed turned off when we said “Zuke’s, Pupparoni’s, dried chicken bits, peanut butter, and dessicated salmon all mixed up in a leather bag.”

Here’s a link to the Three Dogs Training page on Yelp – or you can just use the nifty little Yelp icon that Lawrence put in the upper right-hand corner.

If you use Yelp, we certainly wouldn’t turn our noses up at your giving us some kind words! Positive reinforcement works on trainers, too!

Happy Birthday, Boo!

We wish Boo a very happy and healthy eleventh birthday!

It was eleven years ago October 31st that Boo joined our family.

There was no way we could tell that this little black and white ball of fur we saw in a stripmall fly-by-night pet store would turn into the incredible dog he did.

His mother was probably ill while pregnant, which left him with cerebellar hypoplasia – a disorder which is caused by the cerebellum not being mature at birth – that was immediately apparent in his jerky, stiff movements and overall lack of coordination. His other symptoms gradually made themselves known as it was clear that he was partially deaf, progressively lost his eyesight, and suffered from a number of cognitive disabilities.

Despite all of those hurdles, he was was able to trooper his way through training and eventually passed his Delta Society evaluation to begin his career doing therapy work.

There he was: a small puppy thrown away in front of a pet store, who could barely stand or walk and who would take over a year to housetrain, but he was the one who gave a family their son back and made national news doing it.

As much as we love him, he’s also a powerful reminder that we can’t overestimate an animal’s ability to exceed our expectations (or prejudices) based on their origins or pedigrees. Every dog, whether they’re from a shelter, breeder, or a stray has within them the same potential to shine.

(Editorial Note – I had intended on posting this on Halloween, but that little bit of snow we had left us without power until just recently.)

Happy Holidays from Three Dogs Training!

From our family to yours, we wish you and all your furry little friends a happy and safe holiday season!

All our holiday thanks from Lisa, Lawrence, Boo, Porthos, Pinball, and Freya too– our honorary dog in cat’s clothing.

Holy moly – Three Dogs Training has a mailing list!

Want to get the latest positive reinforcement and Three Dogs Training news in your inbox? Join our mailing list!

We’ve been busy as beavers at Three Dogs lately, but most of the changes have been behind the scenes and out of sight.

One of them that you can see for yourself – if you look just a little over to the right – is that we’ve got a spanking-new mailing list. I thought out loud awhile back that it would be nice to have one to keep people updated with all the new things we’ve got going on and I guess someone was listening.

We’re still finalizing what we really want to do with it, but I can tell you right now what I’m not going to do with it: any of that creepy stuff like loaning it out or selling it off.

It’s easy to join – just put your email in the box and click subscribe. It then sends an email to confirm that you wanted to sign up and even lets you know how to unsubscribe – but who would want to do that?

So, if you’re interested, give it a click and join in on the fun. Best of all, it’s free!