We had a fantastic training session at Lowe’s with our little potato, Sandy! 🌟 She was an absolute rock star during her food training and desensitization session with her new best friend Colton! At this stage, the focus is all about positive exposure to new scenarios and experiences. Obedience will come as the dogs grow and mature, but the most important thing you can do with your puppy at this young age is socialize them appropriately. This helps them grow into confident, happy dogs who are excited to be part of our big exciting world! 🌎🐶 We’re also thrilled to introduce Sandy’s new puppy raiser family: Colton and his brother and sister Kyden and Kenzie and super mom @Holly Westcott . Colton is already showing he’s a rock star too, and tomorrow Sandy will be officially placed with her new foster fam!!🎉 We can’t wait to watch their journey together and share all of their progress inside Cool Dog School.🐾💙

Thank you @Amanda Taulborg for inviting me out to group class to work with Joy yesterday! I appreciate everyone for their kind words, encouragement, and overall just being so welcoming! Joy is such a special girl, and I look forward to working with her more 🩷 Hope to see you all next week!

@Kenzie Carlson put together a super helpful video showing the difference between a basic service dog vest and a few different service dog custom made capes. She walks through the different wording and patches you can add, along with some tips and tricks she’s picked up along the way! One big recommendation from Kenzie: make sure your cape has pockets — they come in handy! To clarify: in this video, the cape is shown attached to a counterbalance mobility support harness, but capes and custom made service vests can also be ordered for non-mobility purposes. If you’re looking for a custom-made vest or cape, Etsy is one of the best places to find options. A huge thank you to @Kenzie Carlson for creating this video and to @Stepho Wilson for editing it — you are the best! 🐾🙌

🎉 Everyone, please welcome our newest addition, Sandy the Goldendoodle! 🐾 She’s a little champion rock star and jumping into her very first Spot lesson! Learning SPOT is going to help her in so many ways — it builds balance, boosts confidence, gets her comfortable with new surfaces, teaches her a front-feet target, and helps her develop rear-end awareness. These foundations are not just fun, they’re hugely beneficial for her future as a service dog! Spot training carries over into a variety of advanced tasks and behaviors she’ll be learning down the road!

or the last hour or so of my work day, Atlas was just DONE. His focus was gone, nothing could bring him back. There was a group of kids playing some game they made up all around the library while we were shelving books. They weren’t running or anything (we don’t allow running in the library and are quick to tell kids to stop if they run) but Atlas was just absolutely 100% hyperfocused on them. He would sit, down, and stay when I asked, but his head was on swivel. He was NOT afraid (I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time this dog was afraid of something… scarecrow as a puppy maybe??) He just seemed to REALLY want to know where they were and what they were doing. On top of that, a co-worker had burnt a bag of popcorn on their break so that smell lingered a little into the main library, but not too bad. I assumed the smell was making him crazy at first but when it continued for an hour after the smell was mostly gone from the main area of the library, I knew it wasn’t that. Two of the girls have developmental disabilities so I was wondering if he was also picking up on that? The last time he was ever this hyperfocused on a person was when I worked at my last job and a manager would come in drunk (yes he got fired). Atlas could smell it on him. Any advice? We did sneakaways on the leash, I tried moving away from where they were, etc and he always found a way to look toward or at them. The kids didn’t try to pet him or anything, they just said “ooh, dog!” noticing him, then HE initiated trying to sniff them repeatedly and I just never could figure out why. Of course he got corrected for that. They come in regularly and he’s seen them, so idk why today was so different. Atlas pic for tax because despite the rough evening he is the best boy and I love him so much!