Frisbee is a great way to tire out your dog and have fun in the process. You should understand the basics of training a retrieve before you start. Read my article about training a retrieve.

Retrieve and Frisbee are two great training exercises to work on with your dog. As always, focus on keeping your dog engaged and interested in each session instead of getting stressed out about finishing the final behavior in one session. Have fun with it and remember that the journey is just important as the final goal.

The Canine Good Citizen test is used to encourage the training of dogs to comply with guidelines that identify well-mannered dogs. Once a dog passes the test, they can receive a tag with the Canine Good Citizen designation. Sometimes landlords require this to live in their dog-friendly building. This is also the first step for dogs to gain the more advanced therapy dog certification.

Want a fun training activity that you can practice inside and outside? Teach "Go Find Someone". The long-term goal is to ask your dog to find a family member by name and then your dog runs off and finds that person! If you are really savvy, you can combine it with a "Hold" and have your dog be the family messenger. Write a quick note to your son, 'Dinner in 5 minutes', give it to your dog and then say, "Go find Josh". Your dog will bring the note to Josh! How cool!

On Friday I met a client for the first session and met his wonderful 1.5 year old Labrador Retriever named Riley. Our session ended after some fantastic leash work, placement cues and some work on Stay. As I was leaving, my client opened the door for me just as a delivery man was opening the door on the ground level. My client immediately saw the worst. The door was open, the gate was open and Riley ran through both.