Full Specialized Training in South Lake Tahoe

What the program covers

Sometimes you just need some help in getting your dog under control. Our "Full Specialized Training" program is 21 days. Here they will learn proper etiquette for living in a house with people, how to correctly greet people without jumping, and obedience. Your dog's obedience behaviors will be at an advanced level.

The three named outcomes we work to in every case:

• Leash walking in high distraction environments
• At least a 15 minute down stay in high distraction environments
• Reliable recall around distractions

The qualifier on every line is on purpose. We are not training a sit in the kitchen. We are training a sit, a down, a leash walk, and a recall in the conditions where you actually need them. The specialized training program can be done for less than the full 21 days. It is offered on a per-day basis. With less than the full 21 days, results will vary.

Three weeks. Daily structure.

The dog arrives. We give the first day or two to acclimation because a dog under stress does not learn. The first days are observation and rapport, not drills. We watch how the dog moves through the house, how the dog handles the routine, where the easy wins are, and where the work is.

Week one builds the foundation behaviors. Sit, down, stay, the recall word, leash position, and the marker that tells the dog which behavior we are paying for. We work in short sessions spaced through the day so the dog stays under threshold and the new behaviors get reinforced before the dog gets tired. The mechanism is operant conditioning with positive reinforcement, the same model Karen Pryor lays out in Don't Shoot the Dog!, applied to your dog.

Week two takes the foundation into real-world conditions. We add distance and we add distractions. We work in the actual environments your dog will live in. Week three layers the owner. You come for the handoff. We walk through every behavior the dog has learned, you practice the cues and the reinforcement contingency, and we make sure the dog responds to you, not just to Scott.

When Full Specialized Training is the right format

The 21-day program fits a dog whose home environment has so many reinforcement cues for the unwanted behavior that we cannot get under threshold inside the house. It fits a household where the owner cannot run a daily protocol for three weeks but can show up for handoff and run it from there. It fits cases of reactivity where a context reset gives the new conditioning room to take, and many cases of separation anxiety where the panic cues live in the dog's environment.

It does not fit every dog. Acute fear or aggression that needs slow graduated exposure in the home environment is better in private in-home lessons. Very young puppies under five months belong in puppy class, not a residential program. Dogs with medical needs that prevent boarding are not candidates. Some cases of separation anxiety, especially highly bonded geriatric dogs, progress faster in their own home with the owner present. Scott screens for fit on the intake call. If the program is not the right move, we will say so and we will recommend the format that is.

See the separation anxiety page for the format decision on that specific behavior, or the reactive dog page for the same on reactivity.

What makes this a humane program

You can motivate a dog in two ways, with pain or pleasure. At Good Dog Tahoe, we use a positive reinforcement, or pleasure, approach in order to teach or modify your dog's behavior. We advocate using humane methods for training your best friend. The dog goes home with behaviors that hold because the dog learned them, not because a tool suppressed them.

A few things to ask any live-in trainer before you book. Can you drop in unannounced. What does a daily update look like. What tools are used. What does pickup day include. How does the program handle a dog that does not fit. We answer all five on the intake call.

Owners ask these first

Short answers below. Cross-cutting questions on cost, group vs private format, and what we use for training have canonical answers on the FAQ page.