Welcome to Treasured Creatures Dog Training!
The TC Training Methodology
The Treasured Creatures methodology is based on a scientific understanding of dog behavior and how training can change behavior over time. Our training strategy comes from years of education and professional experience.
In TC’s custom dog training programs, you’ll learn how to use a strategic combination of management, positive reinforcement, desensitization, and counterconditioning methods to change your dog’s behavior in an effective, non-aversive way that helps you build a stronger bond with your dog.
We don’t recommend attempting to punish out problem behaviors with aversives like pain or fear, as it doesn’t deal with the root cause of the issue and often has unintended consequences such as fear of you and generalized anxiety. The one type of punishment we recommend in some cases is negative punishment.
The TC Training Methodology
The Treasured Creatures methodology is based on a scientific understanding of dog behavior and how training can change behavior over time. Our training strategy comes from years of education and professional experience.
In TC’s custom dog training programs, you’ll learn how to use a strategic combination of management, positive reinforcement, desensitization, and counterconditioning methods to change your dog’s behavior in an effective, non-aversive way that helps you build a stronger bond with your dog.
We don’t recommend attempting to punish out problem behaviors with aversives like pain or fear, as it doesn’t deal with the root cause of the issue and often has unintended consequences such as fear of you and generalized anxiety. The one type of punishment we recommend in some cases is negative punishment.
If you’d like to learn more about the dog training methods mentioned above (in bold) and the Treasured Creatures approach to dog training, click here.
Private In Home Day Training
Treasured Creatures offers customized training programs designed with your dog’s personality and your living situation in mind to fit your goals for your dog’s behavior. Each training session, an experienced trainer will come to your house to train your dog and, more importantly, train you how to train your dog so that you can progress with your dog’s training on your own.
Training sessions will be followed by an email with a custom training plan detailing the concepts covered that session as they relate to your dog’s training, so there is no need to take notes (although you can certainly jot some things down during the session if you would like). If you find after receiving the email that you have some questions, you can reach out to us and we’ll either write back answers to the questions or set up a quick phone call free of charge if appropriate.
We offer owner absent sessions, meaning a dog trainer comes to your house and trains your dog without your presence. If you would like us to train your dog while no one is home, you can give us access to your house and we will send you a message after the session to let you know how it went. Owner absent sessions must be supplemented with owner present sessions in order for you to learn how to maintain and progress your dog’s training.
Maintaining and Progressing Training
Maintaining and progressing your dog’s training requires consistent work over time. Keep in mind that your dog is constantly learning from you, even when you aren’t conducting a formal training session. Progression often requires slowly increasing the difficulty level over many training sessions over many days. Taking days off from training will slow down progress. Even if you were to progress all of your dog’s behaviors to the level you desire, you would still need to maintain your dog’s training over time or risk it falling apart.
Behaviors on Cue
Treasured Creatures offers training to teach your dog strong responses to verbal cues or hand signals. Behaviors like sit, stay, leave it, come, and focusing on you are very useful to have on cue. If your dog only responds to your cues some of the time, we can help you strengthen that response even in the presence of distractions.
- Name Response – Your dog will learn to respond to his or her name by turning toward the person who said it. Getting your dog’s attention is a vital part of basic obedience training. Once you have his or her attention you can ask for another behavior.
- Sit – Everyone knows this one! It means ‘plop your butt down.
- Down – This cue means ‘lay down,’ not to be confused with ‘off,’ a cue that means ‘four paws on the ground.’
- Stay – This cue means ‘hold position until released.’
- Place – This cue means ‘go to the mat and lay down until released.’ It works just like ‘stay’ but with a specific target for the dog to go to before holding position. This behavior will be useful for teaching your dog to be calm in a variety of situations. This behavior can be transferred from the mat to a dog bed.
- Free (release cue) – The word ‘free’ is the release cue for stay and place. Your dog will learn to respond to this cue by getting up and moving.
- Recall (come) – Your dog will learn to more consistently come when called.
- Leave It – This cue means ‘don’t take that thing you’re currently focused on.’ This cue can be used to teach your dog not to eat trash off of the ground, not to steal things off of counters, and to only take things from people when they offer them up.
- Drop – This cue means ‘spit out whatever is in your mouth.’
- Hand targeting – Your dog will learn to bump your hand with his or her nose on cue. This behavior allows you to control your dog’s movements and can be used to teach other behaviors that involve moving into position.
- Off – This cue means ‘put four paws on the ground’.
- Name Response – Your dog will learn to respond to his or her name by turning toward the person who said it. Getting your dog’s attention is a vital part of basic obedience training. Once you have his or her attention you can ask for another behavior.
- Sit – Everyone knows this one! It means ‘plop your butt down.
- Down – This cue means ‘lay down,’ not to be confused with ‘off,’ a cue that means ‘four paws on the ground.’
- Stay – This cue means ‘hold position until released.’
- Place – This cue means ‘go to the mat and lay down until released.’ It works just like ‘stay’ but with a specific target for the dog to go to before holding position. This behavior will be useful for teaching your dog to be calm in a variety of situations. This behavior can be transferred from the mat to a dog bed.
- Free (release cue) – The word ‘free’ is the release cue for stay and place. Your dog will learn to respond to this cue by getting up and moving.
- Recall (come) – Your dog will learn to more consistently come when called.
- Leave It – This cue means ‘don’t take that thing you’re currently focused on.’ This cue can be used to teach your dog not to eat trash off of the ground, not to steal things off of counters, and to only take things from people when they offer them up.
- Drop – This cue means ‘spit out whatever is in your mouth.’
- Hand targeting – Your dog will learn to bump your hand with his or her nose on cue. This behavior allows you to control your dog’s movements and can be used to teach other behaviors that involve moving into position.
- Off – This cue means ‘put four paws on the ground’.
- Name Response – Your dog will learn to respond to his or her name by turning toward the person who said it. Getting your dog’s attention is a vital part of basic obedience training. Once you have his or her attention you can ask for another behavior.
- Sit – Everyone knows this one! It means ‘plop your butt down.
- Down – This cue means ‘lay down,’ not to be confused with ‘off,’ a cue that means ‘four paws on the ground.’
- Stay – This cue means ‘hold position until released.’
- Place – This cue means ‘go to the mat and lay down until released.’ It works just like ‘stay’ but with a specific target for the dog to go to before holding position. This behavior will be useful for teaching your dog to be calm in a variety of situations. This behavior can be transferred from the mat to a dog bed.
- Free (release cue) – The word ‘free’ is the release cue for stay and place. Your dog will learn to respond to this cue by getting up and moving.
- Recall (come) – Your dog will learn to more consistently come when called.
- Leave It – This cue means ‘don’t take that thing you’re currently focused on.’ This cue can be used to teach your dog not to eat trash off of the ground, not to steal things off of counters, and to only take things from people when they offer them up.
- Drop – This cue means ‘spit out whatever is in your mouth.’
- Hand targeting – Your dog will learn to bump your hand with his or her nose on cue. This behavior allows you to control your dog’s movements and can be used to teach other behaviors that involve moving into position.
- Off – This cue means ‘put four paws on the ground’.
Good Manners
Treasured Creatures offers training to teach your dog to exhibit good manners in certain contexts such as when you take your dog out for a walk on leash or when guests come over. Having behaviors on cue is helpful for teaching good manners, but it’s also important that your dog learn how to behave when you aren’t telling him or her what to do each moment.
- Loose Leash Walking – walk with the handler and keep slack in the leash
- Greetings – greet people politely without jumping, mouthing, or becoming overly excited
- Door Manners – wait for permission before going through doorways and before exiting a car
- Guest Manners – sit politely while guests enter the home and wait for permission to greet them
- Grooming Consent – accept grooming like nail trims, teeth brushing, hair brushing, and haircuts
- Human Meal Times – refrain from begging or stealing
- Loose Leash Walking – walk with the handler and keep slack in the leash
- Greetings – greet people politely without jumping, mouthing, or becoming overly excited
- Door Manners – wait for permission before going through doorways and before exiting a car
- Guest Manners – sit politely while guests enter the home and wait for permission to greet them
- Grooming Consent – accept grooming like nail trims, teeth brushing, hair brushing, and haircuts
- Human Meal Times – refrain from begging or stealing
Behavioral Issues
Treasured Creatures offers behavioral modification for issues like reactivity, anxiety, and fear. Behavioral modification involves changing how your dog feels in certain contexts along with teaching new, more appropriate behaviors.
Reactivity on Walks
Dogs who are reactive while out on walks lock in on something like another dog, a person, or a squirrel and then react explosively with behaviors like lunging and barking. Sometimes a dog’s reactivity seems to stem from over-excitement and a desire to meet/chase the object of interest, while other times it seems to stem from fear and a desire for the thing to go away.
Sound Reactivity
Dogs with sound reactivity are overly startled by certain noises and may take a while to recover from the scare. Sounds that often trigger sound reactivity in dogs are thunder, fireworks, and construction.
Resource Guarding
Dogs who guard resources show signs of stress when they have a valued resource and someone approaches them, touches the resource, and/or touches the dog. Resource guarding behaviors include stiffening, widening of the eyes, growling, snapping, and biting. Your dog moving farther away from you or hiding away in a corner when she gets ahold of a valued resource is also a sign of mild resource guarding. Even if your dog’s resource guarding seems manageable, it can still lead to a bite incident if something unexpected happens such as a plate of chicken drops and breaks on the floor. Resource guarding against people is especially concerning in a house with children who may unknowingly trigger the resource guarding.
Reactivity on Walks
Dogs who are reactive while out on walks lock in on something like another dog, a person, or a squirrel and then react explosively with behaviors like lunging and barking. Sometimes a dog’s reactivity seems to stem from over-excitement and a desire to meet/chase the object of interest, while other times it seems to stem from fear and a desire for the thing to go away.
Sound Reactivity
Dogs with sound reactivity are overly startled by certain noises and may take a while to recover from the scare. Sounds that often trigger sound reactivity in dogs are thunder, fireworks, and construction.
Resource Guarding
Dogs who guard resources show signs of stress when they have a valued resource and someone approaches them, touches the resource, and/or touches the dog. Resource guarding behaviors include stiffening, widening of the eyes, growling, snapping, and biting. Your dog moving farther away from you or hiding away in a corner when she gets ahold of a valued resource is also a sign of mild resource guarding. Even if your dog’s resource guarding seems manageable, it can still lead to a bite incident if something unexpected happens such as a plate of chicken drops and breaks on the floor. Resource guarding against people is especially concerning in a house with children who may unknowingly trigger the resource guarding.
Sound Reactivity
Dogs with sound reactivity are overly startled by certain noises and may take a while to recover from the scare. Sounds that often trigger sound reactivity in dogs are thunder, fireworks, and construction.
Resource Guarding
Dogs who resource guard show signs of stress when they have a valued resource and someone approaches them, touches the item, and/or touches the dog. This may include stiffening, widening of the eyes, grabbing the item and moving away with it, growling, snapping, and biting. Even if your dog’s resource guarding seems manageable, it can still lead to a bite incident if something unexpected happens such as a plate of chicken drops and breaks on the floor.
Resource guarding against other animals in the house is a common cause of problems between multiple dogs in a household or between a dog and cat(s) in a household. Disputes may arise around food, edible chews, toys, comfortable resting spots, doorways, or even human attention.
Crate Anxiety
Dogs with crate anxiety may resist entering their crate. Once closed inside, they will exhibit signs of stress such as paw pad sweating, panting, drooling, yawning, biting or pawing at the bars of the crate, soiling the crate, and vocalizing with whining, yelping, or barking. Some dogs with crate anxiety are even afraid of the noise the crate makes when touched.
Separation Anxiety
Dogs with separation anxiety will show signs of stress as they watch their owners perform the activities they typically perform before leaving the dog home alone such as putting on shoes, grabbing keys, and bustling around. They may leave sweaty paw prints on the floor, pant, drool, yawn, or whine. Once left alone, their anxiety will intensify, and they will exhibit stress induced behaviors such as barking or yelping, digging or biting at doors or windows, destroying furniture, soiling the floor, and biting/scratching at their own body.
Stranger Anxiety
Dogs with stranger anxiety exhibit signs of stress around people they aren’t familiar with. Some dogs with stranger anxiety will cower, hide, and try to escape. When that doesn’t work, they may exhibit aggressive behaviors like growling and even biting. With these dogs, a bite incident is less likely if unfamiliar people keep their distance. Other dogs with stranger anxiety will growl, stiffen, stare with wide eyes, and may even move towards the unfamiliar person who is causing them anxiety, making a bite incident more likely.
Stranger Anxiety
Dogs with stranger anxiety exhibit signs of stress around people they aren’t familiar with. Some dogs with stranger anxiety will cower, hide, and try to escape. When that doesn’t work, they may exhibit aggressive behaviors like growling and even biting. With these dogs, a bite incident is less likely if unfamiliar people keep their distance. Other dogs with stranger anxiety will growl, stiffen, stare with wide eyes, and may even move towards the unfamiliar person who is causing them anxiety, making a bite incident more likely.
Stranger Anxiety
Dogs with stranger anxiety exhibit signs of stress around people they aren’t familiar with. Some dogs with stranger anxiety will cower, hide, and try to escape. When that doesn’t work, they may exhibit aggressive behaviors like growling and even biting. With these dogs, a bite incident is less likely if unfamiliar people keep their distance. Other dogs with stranger anxiety will growl, stiffen, stare with wide eyes, and may even move towards the unfamiliar person who is causing them anxiety, making a bite incident more likely.
In Home Day Training Prices
| Number of Sessions | Price Per Session | Total Price |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $90 | $90 |
| 4 | $85 | $340 |
| 8 | $80 | $640 |
| 12 | $75 | $900 |
| 16 | $70 | $1120 |
Contact Us
Call or text us
+1 614-535-6689
Email us
sydney@sydneystreasuredcreatures.com
Contact Us
Call or text us
+1 614-535-6689
Email us
sydney@sydneystreasuredcreatures.com