Dog Training

5 Non Negotiable Commands Every Dog Needs.

Our Goal is a take anywhere dog.

Is it time to call a professional?

Are you struggling with how to properly train your dog?

Have you watched 50 YouTube dog training videos?
Are you finding yourself yelling at your dog?
Is what worked on your last dog not working?

Is your dog still pulling no matter what you do?
Are you struggling with jumping, biting, nipping?
Can you not stop nuisance barking?

OR

Is it time to call a professional dog trainer?

Are you catching yourself yelling?
Does your dog always pull on the leash?
Are you still dealing with jumping?

Do you avoid taking your dog in public?
Is what used to work not working?
Are you getting frustrated with your dog?

Schedule $1.00 First Lesson

In just 2 – 4 weeks a Tip Top Trainer can teach you how to:

  • Communicate better with your dog
  • Fix jumping on guests
  • Fix mouthing, biting and nipping
  • Stop leash pulling for good
  • Get your dog to listen to you
  • Get control without gentle leaders or harnesses
  • Stop your dog from bolting out the front door
  • Fix digging (unless there are moles in the yard)
  • Stop nuisance barking
  • The proper way to work stays
  • How to use a “Place” command
  • Teach and enforce a 100% “Come” when called
  • And MORE!

Schedule $1.00 First Lesson

How Do I Sign Up?

Well you can’t sign up unless we meet with you and your dog first. We do this at a $1.00 first lesson.

What’s My Investment?

Your investment is two fold: Time and Money. Both of these will depend on our assessment of your dog’s age, breed, and issues as well as your needs, your time, you ability to do the homework needed, and your budget.  We dont give exact quotes over the phone and see that as a bad business practice by lazy dog trainers! A doctor doesn’t prescribe medication without first diagnosing patients and neither do we prescribe training regimens without first working with your dog.

If you are a budget shopper then Tip Top K9 is not going to be the best fit for you. That being said we have an EXTREMELY high success rate and give a money back guarantee on our work.

Schedule $1.00 First Lesson

OUR GOAL:

Our goal and desire is that our clients can take their trained dogs with them anywhere and everywhere they go! We want our clients to be able to trust their dog because of its training and know that their dog will mind them no matter what the distraction is!! We take our dogs to the lake, to the park, to friends and family member’s houses and we want to be able to help you do the same!!

Obedience, off-leash obedience, and manners is our main focus.

All of our dog trainers are dog lovers first and foremost. We train dogs because we love them! We are not militant Nazis but in our dog training classes we do provide structure and boundaries and show you how to teach your dog to listen. Our goal – dogs that listen each and every time they are told to do something.

Through our unique method of dog training we will strive to teach your dog to listen every single time mommy and daddy speaks! We want 100% obedience. Not make your dog a robot, but teach them that they have to respect you and do what you say.

Reward or Punishment… Which one is better?

All types of dog training can work. Dogs are smart! People have been training dogs for a long, long time to do different things. But just like everything else in the world, there are good and bad methods, fast and slow methods, efficient and not efficient methods. Most dog trainers are teaching some sort of either positive or negative reinforcement (i.e. either do good and get rewarded or do bad and get punished). In this section we will go over problems with purely positive dog training or purely punishment based dog training or negative reinforcement and then finally go over our Tip Top Method of training and why we get better results than other obedience trainers.

Problems with positive reinforcement (only treat training):

If the dog is paid for good behavior and it stops getting paid (treats) then the good behavior normally stops as well. (If your boss stopped paying you then your enthusiasm for work would pry go down and you would probably stop working…)
If a higher reward than your treat comes by (rabbit, squirrel, neighbor dog) your dog will always go for whatever is the highest reward for its dog brain. (Your dog will always take a $10 over a $5 bill.)

Timing is crucial – typical positive reinforcement only trainers will limit dog training clients to only one dog and one dog handler per class because they must intensively train the owner handling the dog. When it comes to reward based training if you tell your dog sit and then pause 5 seconds and then reward the dog then you actually just rewarded your dog for staying, not sitting…. Or if you said “Come” and your dog comes and then you fumbled with your treats and the dog sits and you then pay with food you just rewarded your dog for sitting, not the actual come on command. Most food rewards need to be delivered to the dog in under 2 seconds of the dog performing the behavior.

Different respect for different people – depending on how different family members pay the dog with food depends on how the dog responds to them. If mom pays excellent (lots of treats) and dad pays stingy (very few treats) then the dog listens to mom and doesn’t as much to dad because one owner is a better paying boss than the other. (Dad pays $5 an hour but Mom pays $50 an hour.)

Some dogs are not very food motivated and you have to really limit their food to get them to listen for food. (Most people don’t know this but the dolphins at Sea World only jump and do tricks because if they don’t jump they don’t eat!)

Some owners don’t like paying the dog, but want the dog to listen because they said so!

When training Yorkies, Poodles, Shitzus or other small dogs they can get full on treats really fast!

While treat training can work good indoors it seldom works outdoors in heavy distraction. (In the dolphin training scenario they are only trained and do tricks in tanks of water, NEVER out in the open sea where they have choices!)

If the dogs aren’t interested in treats or food then what happens is treat trainers will recommend “fasting” the dog for a day or two. So basically if the dog won’t train well with food you have to make it really hungry and starve it so that it will work for food…. This is not very positive!!

Problems with punishment based training or negative reinforcement:

The effectiveness of punishment based dog training depends on the dog owner’s personality or physical strength – some styles (such as prong or pinch collar training) can work for people that have no problem being harsh but don’t work for gentler dog handlers, elderly people or for children. If you have an 85 lb Doberman and you are using a prong/pinch collar then the mom or dad of the family may be able to physically make the dog do things and work the dog but a 12 year old girl will not be able to muscle the dog around or generate the same fear/respect as the parents would.

2. Can ruin the dogs attitude – if a trainer is really harshly correcting the dog (such as using a pinch collar and giving a big leash jerk) then it can really dampen the dogs attitude and make them not like training or not like the trainer. When using negative reinforcement (like a pinch collar)if the dog doesn’t listen or is distracted they get harder and harder chokes on the collar and more pressure on their neck and throat until they listen! OUCH!

3. Using negatives can make aggressive dogs more aggressive. If you have an aggressive Pitbull and every time he lunges for a dog you give him a big jerk on a pinch collar a lot of really aggressive dogs will see that “correction” coming from you (since you are at the other end of the leash!) and will come up that leash and REDIRECT their aggression to you! This is very common with aggressive dogs and pinch collars.

Pinch, prong, and choke collars kill dogs every year from blunt force trauma to the throat!
It is very hard to transfer from a prong or pinch collar (both of which requires a leash) to off leash obedience training because the dog sees the correction or negative coming directly from the leash and from the owner.

Obviously training dogs with punishment based dog training or negative reinforcement can work and lots of people do it (although normally it is seen more with the protection type breeds Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds) but these are the disadvantages.

Problems with shock collars:

Some people don’t get good results with traditional training methods (such as the methods above) when teaching their dog to stop jumping or not run away and so turn to shock collars. But shock collars are not good either! What is a shock collar? A shock collar is basically an electric fence around a dog’s neck with a button that sends a lightning bolt to the dog! OUCH!! If you see the training collars at most local pet stores their remotes go 1-8 (1 being low and 8 being super ouch!) and normally have a low and high button. These are basically just used as an electronic newspaper. Originally shock collars were created 30 years ago as a punishment tool stop dogs from chasing cattle or to keep hunting dogs from running away. The original collars were brutal and painful.

Most “training collars” that you see at pet stores today are this variety, they are not very variable (say that 10x fast!) and are normally adapted from an underground fence collar and then the company puts a remote to the underground fence collar. If you have ever felt an underground fence collar it is strong!! SUPER strong, they can work but OUCH!

Basically, most training collars on the market are some version of an underground fence collar with a remote that goes from 1-8 on it and a few buttons such as tone or vibrate.

Problems with shock collars:

Most are too hot or too powerful to do anything but use it as a pure punishment. (Think electronic newspaper)
They are not variable enough. If you work the dog too high on the collar you will ruin the dog’s attitude. When the remote only goes from 1-8 the difference in the stimulation between 1 and 2 is normally a 15-20% increase. That means if the dog can just barely feel it and you need to turn it up that you cannot just make a small incremental change but if you need more attention from your dog you have to go up 20% higher.

Most people train with them incorrectly and this is unfair to the dog. If the dog doesn’t understand what your asking and gets shocked he is gonna have a bad attitude.

If used incorrectly can make aggressive dogs more aggressive. If lightning bolts hit your dog eventually your dog will figure out how to get away from the lightning. Depending on how your dog is wired he may just shut down and go fetal or he may think its connected to whoever is closest to him and try to bite them but your dog will always try to avoid heavy amounts of pain in whatever way makes sense to them as an indivudual.

Training with shock collars can work and lots of hunting dog trainers around the country train with them but there are also a lot of bad stories out there of people being too rough with them and using them too high and being unfair to the dog. While they can be effective these are the disadvantages.

Most bird dog trainers are using a method that relies on generating fear (dog says – dads cruel if I don’t listen) or respect (dog says – when I do good then good things happen!) or both. The problem with this is in that fear and respect can be hard to transfer.

If you have seen the dog whisperer on tv, Cesar Millan, he is a very good trainer and while he has a very unique method that gets good results he often has a very hard time transferring what he does to the owner of the dog!

How we train dogs: We teach attention. Attention is not using fear or respect to train with, but teaching the dog using a conditioned response. We teach dogs to pay attention with our unique Tip Top Method of dog training that uses the leash and a training collar and verbal commands. We seek to generate a conditioned response so every time you the dog owner speaks your dog has to pay attention.

In our method we do not reward dogs for listening and we do not punish them for not listening. Instead we teach them exactly what is expected of them and teach them that they are required to do it each and every time we give the command! Your first lesson with us is only $1.00!! So call us today and let us show you what made us the top ranked dog trainer across the U.S.

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