How Kennel Training Tips and Adding Rules Can Help Karma

Karma is a two-year-old Catahoula mix who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Her guardians called us to set up a dog behavior training session to help her learn to stop being an excited dog or fearful when approached by new people and some kennel training.

After chatting with Karma’s guardians about her dog behavior problems, I learned that there wasn’t a lot of structure in place. As a dog behaviorist, I have learned that you combine this with a dog who is on the needy side that is used to getting attention on demand, you can end up with an anxious dog.

I suggested a number of ways for her guardians to provide her with structure to shrink her world view so that she doesn’t feel responsible for her humans and that she is earning her attention through good behavior. By petting with a purpose, rewarding desired behavior through passive training and enforcing rules and boundaries via Escalating Consequences, Karma’s guardians can help her develop more self control which will address the root cause of some of her behavior problems including any potential separation anxiety; feeling responsible for or incomplete / inadequate without the presence of a human.

To help Karma with her fear of the kennel, we did some kennel training. You can get some free dog training tips on crate training in the video below.

Helping a dog get over a fear of the crate is such a beneficial type of behavior modification as its a variant of positive dog training and it is so transformative.

By the end of the session, Karma was laying down in the kennel completely relaxed, was following the new rules and looking to her humans for guidance and leadership. Practice at these exercises and teaching new skills like the Stay will go a long ways towards eliminating these unwanted dog problems for good.

We wrapped up the session by shooting a roadmap to success video filled with many of the dog training tips I shared with Karma’s guardians in this session.