Would you like your dog to be great on leash during your walks down Fort Funston, or to have good recall while at Lafayette Dog Park? Maybe you would like your dog to be less reactive to other dogs so you can both enjoy visiting restaurants, vet clinics, or having guests at your home? If your schedule isn’t flexible enough for in person training, or you prefer virtual dog training options, you should check out virtual dog training programs in San Francisco with Beyond the Dog.
Beyond the Dog’s Virtual Training Programs are run by a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist
In our virtual dog training programs, you will receive training from Beyond the Dog’s co-founder, Dr. Kristyn Echterling-Savage. Dr. Echterling-Savage is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist (CAAB) and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), with a PhD in Behavioral Psychology. Her credentials include research publications on canine behavior modification and over twenty five years of hands-on experience, including both training and mentoring trainers.
To find out more about Beyond the Dog and Dr. Echterling-Savage, you can view our videos on our Tik Tok and Youtube channels, Dr. Echterling-Savage’s dog training blog and her Linked in. Or contact us directly at Beyond the Dog.
How does our Virtual Training Program Work?
Our virtual training program begins with a 45 minute virtual consultation with Dr. Echterling-Savage. During this time she will assess your dog’s behavior, training goals and develop a personalized training plan.
Within 48 hours of this first consultation, we will ask that you share some short videos of your dog’s daily routines (such as treatment, feeding or other relevant situations). You will also complete a tracker and send any additional videos within 4–5 days. Dr. Echterling-Savage will review these videos and trackers in detail, and provide guidance and feedback.
There will be a 30 minute consultation with Dr. Echterling-Savage each week. These consultations will help you to review progress, fine tune or change any strategies and address any challenges that arise.
You will always stay connected with Dr. Echterling-Savage, where you can chat through video chat/phone check ins, emails/texts and video submissions.
Every virtual training program is designed to meet your dog’s unique needs. With a focus on achieving long lasting improvements in their overall well being.
Which Problem Behaviors Do We Address in Our Virtual Training Programs?
Many of our San Francisco clients live in apartments, where the dog meets new people and pets everyday when going outside. While this can be good for exposure, it can be stressful for an anxious or fearful dog. Each program is personalized to your unique needs to ensure long lasting success in addressing any problem behaviors and teaching high level obedience and manners.
Problem behaviors that we address includes:
- Reactivity: Which includes barking, growling, lunging, or biting towards people or other dogs.
- Resource guarding: Such as snapping, lunging, and growling towards others over high value items, over particular places in the home, and even certain people.
- Separation Anxiety: Including constantly whining and barking when alone, scratching, biting, and chewing through crate doors and bedroom doors to escape out of a room, self harm such as chewing on themselves, and urinating and defecating in the home even when potty trained.
- Cat chasing: Such as growling, barking, stalking and chasing your cat
- Touch sensitivity: Which includes snapping, growling, or biting when someone tries to touch them. This can include when you try to put a leash on your dog, bother them when relaxing in a cozy spot, or when they are handled by a groomer or veterinarian.
- Fearful behavior: Such as cowering, pulling uncontrollably on a leash, or stiffening when exposed to people, pets, animals, or things such as passing vehicles and loud noises such as smoke alarms. Shaking, with their tail between their legs, and desperately trying to go back inside the house when in the yard. Struggling to follow obedience commands when confronted with fearful stimuli.
Our training philosophy
Our personalized training programs focus on building confidence and a strong bond. Training is most effective when your dog feels safe, motivated and understood.
We use training methods including classical conditioning and positive reinforcement. We identify why the dog is engaging in a behavior, then teach them an appropriate way to get the same or similar results. An example of this is when:
- Correcting a dog who jumps up to greet people by teaching them to autosit for attention. The dog will receive the attention that they crave, but only by being well behaved.
Now, if a problem behavior continues after the dog understands what we expect and consistently shows the appropriate behavior, we may use appropriate punishment to reduce or eliminate the problem behavior.
All problem behaviors are addressed through behavioral modification training that uses science based and humane training methods. Our methods provide long term success that helps your dog become a more confident dog who is more comfortable in everyday situations, whether it is at your home or exploring your neighborhood with you.
Punishments do not need to be scary or painful. Beyond the Dog will never use shock, prong or choke collars. We will never use throw chains or any scary objects towards dogs as a form of punishment. Beyond the Dog’s humane punishments do include time outs and verbal reprimands.
Our training methods include classical conditioning, antecedent interventions, and positive reinforcement, which rely on reward-based training to deliver results. For further information, Dr. Echterling-Savage has discussed the effectiveness of behavioral modification training in her blog “Does behavior modification work with dogs”.
We are here to help
If you are interested in learning more about our training, you can reach out to our pet behavior team for a free consultation, where we can chat with you and provide a personalized recommendation that meets your needs.
Would you like information on dog training? We recommend you check out our puppy training blog, Dr. Echterling-Savage’s dog training blog, our Tik Tok channel, or our YouTube channel.
