Appreciating Your Commitment: Why Choose a Professional Dog Trainer

Working one-on-one with a trainer or coach is proven to give you better results–regardless of what you want to accomplish. Research done on career, fitness, and personal growth coaching can be applied to training your dog. In every case where you want more knowledge or better results, you may realize you’re not an expert on how to succeed. Then, you hire a professional to help guide you. 

A good personal fitness trainer will teach you exercises and send you home to keep practicing. Your personal physical fitness isn’t about handing your training over to someone else to fix. You must dedicate and apply yourself. Likewise, working one-on-one with a professional dog trainer teaches you the methods and skills to train an awesome family dog.

You could work with a trainer online or from a book, but hiring an in-person coach includes so much more. Like:

• Accountability: showing up to a weekly session is motivating! Each week you’ll have tasks and exercises to practice week to week, and an all-important check in with the trainer.
• Encouragement: a great dog trainer will cheer you on and help you feel confident in your abilities. They’ll help you set realistic goals–and achieve them. 
• Solutions: working with a dog trainer should give you hope that you can work on problem solving to achieve better behavior from your dog. 
• Optimism: experienced dog trainers have seen a lot of dogs and clients. A trainer can “unlock a mindset” and allow you to see possibilities not previously imagined.
• Resilience: a trainer understands you need help figuring out your dog, and can teach you to be flexible and get you to your goal of having an awesome dog. Training your dog requires flexibility, change, and seeing how resilient your dog can be to transform from bad to better behavior.

Adapted from the concept of psychological capital, researched here.

Combat Procrastination

Some owners tend to settle for a “good enough dog” that remains a tolerable problem to live with. Showing up to a dog training session is a commitment to end procrastinating. ‘I’ll work on changing after…’ ‘If I only had time…’ There are all kinds of excuses we make for ourselves for fitness, financial, personal, or spiritual goals. We make excuses for our dogs, too. Hiring a professional to hold you accountable, in addition to teaching new skills, gives you another team member to train your dog. When you decide to dedicate the time to training and practicing higher expectations, you can overcome the “good enough dog” situation in a surprisingly short amount of time. 

Dog Training as a Journey

Clients often ask, ‘What’s the next step?’ ‘What else can I work on?’ We’ve designed our programs to support clients through the full process of the training journey. After starting with one of our 5-session private training programs, clients can sign up for one or three session Advanced Training Programs to continue working on specific behavior issues. 

Our tailored training plan offers a dog owner-trainer relationship where we both are dedicated to the training journey. We are always open to offer ongoing support to add to the ease and comfort of managing your dog. As anyone will tell you about personal goals, it takes long-term commitment and dedication to make the changes you want to see.