About
Hi, I'm Coach T. I don't train dogs out of reacting.
I teach participants to read the dog in front of them, and then what to do about it. Certified canine behavior consultant, AKC approved CGC Evaluator, and a former medical professional.
What I do
Most guardians have already tried everything.
By the time somebody finds me she has bought the harness, watched the videos, hired somebody once, and been told her dog is dominant, or stubborn, or that she is too soft. She has a list of places she does not take her dog any more. She crosses the road before anyone else has seen her.
None of that is a discipline problem. A dog who lunges is frightened, or overwhelmed, or out of quieter ways to ask for space. You cannot correct that out of her, because the feeling underneath it does not go anywhere.
So I do not start with the dog. I start with you, seeing what she is doing in the seconds before the part you have been reacting to. Everything else is built on that.
Your dog isn't failing. Training failed your dog.
What this is built on
Evidence first, opinions second.
Most of what is written about dog training online is opinion repeated confidently. What I teach is limited to what has been measured, and I will tell you which study says it.
Dogs given two weeks of free sniffing walks scored more optimistically than dogs given the same time in structured heel work. Dogs trained with aversive methods showed more stress behaviour, and scored less optimistically afterwards, than dogs trained with reward based methods. And your stress does not stay with you. It goes down the leash before your dog has seen anything at all.
That is the whole argument for doing it this way, and none of it is mine.
Duranton and Horowitz, 2019. Vieira de Castro and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2020. Rooney and colleagues on stress transfer between guardian and dog.
How the work goes
Three steps, always in this order.
Read
You learn to read her, early, before the loud part.
Respond
You learn what your hands and feet do instead.
Change
You go back to the places you stopped going.
Skipping step one is why most training fails. A guardian who cannot see what her dog is telling her is guessing, and a dog who is being guessed at stops asking quietly.
Who I am
In plain terms.
I came to this from medicine, where you are trained to look at the thing in front of you and describe the significance before you touch it. That habit is the whole job here. Dogs are telling us what they need constantly, in a language nobody taught us, and almost every problem I am called about turns out to be a conversation the dog started long before anyone noticed.
I am a certified canine behavior consultant and an AKC approved CGC Evaluator. I work online with guardians in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, live on video, walking their own streets. I am based in Puerto Rico, which is where the in person Service Dog Owner Training happens.
I do not take every dog and I do not promise outcomes. What I will tell you is what I see, what the research supports, and what I would do next if she were mine.
We have to help our dog first, before they will help us.
Start with a walk, not a program.
The Sniff Walk is free, it takes twenty minutes, and you can do it tonight. It is the first thing I would ask you to do anyway.
Start the best walking structure tonight Free. No previous training experience.Straight answers
The three things people ask me first.
Do you work with people outside Puerto Rico?
Yes. Almost everyone I work with is online, in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Sessions run on video, the walks happen on your own street, and you send me what you filmed. The only work that has to be in person is Service Dog Owner Training.
Do you use prong collars, shock collars or corrections?
Nothing I teach relies on pain, fear or startling a dog. That is not a principle I am asking you to adopt. Dogs trained with aversive methods show more stress behavior and score less optimistically afterwards than dogs trained with reward based methods. If you are using something like that now, bring it. We look at your gear together and nobody gets told off.
How is this different from obedience training?
Obedience teaches a dog what to do. It does not change how she feels about what is in front of her, and a reactive dog is reacting to how she feels. Sit is not an answer to frightened. So the work starts with you reading her earlier, then changing what happens on the walk, so she settles instead of being held together by commands.
Where to go next
If you want the whole thing.
Calm Builders is the program version of all of this. Three parts, done in order, live with me and a small group.