Dog Obedience Training by Maureen Keene of Keene Kanine

I can help you with dog obedience training by visiting your home and listening to what you would like to improve with your dog. Then, I will tailor our commands and the obedience training to your needs and goals with your dog.

-Maureen Keene, Obedience Dog Trainer

Obedience Dog Trainer in Long Beach and Serving all of Nassau County, NY

Hearing that term reminds me of the old dog obedience classes in the mini-mall when I was growing up training our puppies. It sounds like an outdated term, but basically, this is a large part of what all dog training is:

Dog obedience training!

Dogs are taught to obey to ensure their life is safe, as in not running out the front door. Dogs are taught to obey so they will come back to us when called and not run off and get hit by a car. Dog obedience training is essential for the safe keeping of your dog regardless of your environment, urban or rural.

I do obedience training daily as I go from home to home and help various people reach their personal goals with their dogs. Therefore obedience training varies from person to person, depending on your goals. I can help you achieve your goals through my personalized obedience training program.

I will come to your home and work one-on-one with you as we find out what motivates your dog, and then we will tweak our communication with your dog so that he is at peak performance when working with him. Your dog will love the training and wait for us to teach him new obedience commands to show us that he has learned yet another new thing!

Dogs are eager to learn, and we can make a positive lifetime connection with them through obedience training. Additionally, through this training, we can clearly communicate and illustrate to the dog who the commander is, and that is a wonderful thing that every dog needs to know.

When they are the leaders, undesirable behaviors come out, and we need to notch them down and make them realize that we are in command. When we practice obedience training, we send them a clear message that we are in control without being harsh or cruel.

We don't take no for an answer and insist on the commands we want. No means no, and stay means stay. I recall a line from Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men. "When rules are broken, lives are lost, son!" So obedience commands can be very strict and very serious, and often lives are on the line in the situation where a command needs to be followed.

Service dogs take care of a person, and even though they have specialized training, their foundational training is obedience training. I train many therapy dogs, and once again, basic obedience training is at the root of everything that needs to be learned.

Dog obedience training involves specific commands that, although simple, are not to be underestimated. For example, SIT and STAY are simple yet essential. These two little commands, when followed, can take you to many places and buy you lots of time with your dog in many different situations. 

COME Is a simple command, yet most dog owners fail to achieve a reliable recall command with their dog. Through my obedience training, we learn all the simple rules of teaching the word come so that we do not inadvertently sabotage the command rendering it useless.

HEEL is a formal walking command that every dog obedience training should include. This special command lets the dog know you want him to ride very close to your left side and not stray away. This command can be utilized for your and your dog's safety and for those around you as you keep your dog close and 100% under your control.

The LEAVE IT command is essential as it will tell the dog not to give attention to any triggers in your midst. This is a vital part of dog obedience training which allows you to walk around many typical dog triggers with him knowing that you do not want him to pay attention or react.

In the home, I always teach a PLACE and SETTLE command. We bring out a little blanket or a towel, and they run to it, saying, "Good PLACE," and sprinkle a few tiny crumbs on the PLACE. Then we run away, and they come with us, and after a moment. We say PLACE, and we run together over to the towel. I then sprinkle more crumbs on the PLACE, and eventually, I will get them into a down position to SETTLE on the PLACE.

I am teaching them the obedience commands of place and settle, and when I say that, I want them to come from wherever they are in the home and go to that PLACE and SETTLE. So this is a very effective tool to utilize and train for when people enter your home. 

When the doorbell rings, we will yell out PLACE and SETTLE, and they will go there and wait. Instead of jumping on guests, running out the front door, or being guarded and aggressive, we can teach them these commands with strong obedience training. They can then learn that guests will greet them in their PLACE. Then, they will learn that they will wait until they hear their RELEASE command to leave their place. 

When we say STAY, and they have learned well through strong dog obedience training, they will not move until you issue a RELEASE command. So this is another command that is essential in our dog obedience training.

Dog obedience training is setting up a series of teachings that will be what we need to pull out of our pocket when we are in our daily routines with our dog. Instead of yelling and trying to communicate what we don't want from a dog, we teach them what we want in each specific circumstance that we will need to have our dog behave in.

Yes, we will issue corrections and timeouts for some unwanted behaviors. Still, in each circumstance, we must illustrate what we do want at this moment instead of the unwanted behavior. This way, when necessary, we pull it out of our pocket and get the behavior we want and need indoors and outdoors from our dogs.