Week 2 Recap: Target Training Techniques for Service Dogs
Building Focus, Precision & Independence
Service dog training is all about breaking complex tasks into manageable skills—and one of the foundational skills is targeting. In Week 2 of Crazy2Calm’s Service Dog Foundations Class, we dove deep into target training methods that help build communication, confidence, and control between handler and dog.
This week’s focus...
2025-09-10 18:18:08 +0000 UTC
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Inside the Crazy2Calm Service Dog Foundations Kickoff: What You Need to Know
Last week, Crazy2Calm Coach Penny hosted an informal kickoff meeting for the Service Dog Foundations and Puppy Training Class and it was packed with helpful information for both new and returning members.
Whether you're just starting out with a service dog in training or looking to deepen your understanding of foundational skills, here's a full breakdown of what went down and what to ex...
2025-09-10 02:38:38 +0000 UTC
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June 19th at 6pm Central
Panel Led By Pine Irwin
Panel Experts Penny Beeman, Amanda VanTessel, Rene Smith, Scott Stauffer
Enjoy this Panel Conversation about common emotional challenges that may take place during your SD journey.
2025-06-19 06:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Let’s build on the idea that dogs can learn context and make good decisions—even when the reward isn’t immediate.
One of the most powerful tools in a service dog handler’s toolkit is the ability to teach delayed reinforcement—the idea that rewards don’t always come right away, but they are coming, and they’re worth the wait!
This skill is essential for real-life situations:
Waiting quietly in a grocery line, lying under ...
2025-06-05 16:34:49 +0000 UTC
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Day 5 - Celebrating Success
We want to take a moment to remind you that dog training is not linear, or it does not follow a straight line. We may think that we’ve conquered a training challenge or solved a challenging behavior only to have it pop back up again. Do not get discouraged when this happens! Simply back up to training basics and work through the games again.
While it’s so easy to become discouraged, we rarely take a moment to celebrate our successes. At C2C Canine...
2025-05-19 19:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Day 4 - Developing Communication
Today we are going to be looking at various methods of communication between dogs and humans. This may include different types of vocalizations that dogs do including that loud alert barking that is driving you made, shorter frustration barks, happy roo-roos when something they love is about to happen, or even super quiet whispers. Dogs also communicate with body language and behavior! Every dog has their own communication, but pay special attention to...
2025-05-18 19:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Day 3 - Desensitization/CounterConditioning
We learned about examining and managing the environment so now we are going to learn about using reinforcement correctly to make learning easier for our dogs. We know that if our dog is experiencing a high level of arousal, based on fear or over-excitement, their listening ears turn off. It can seem like they are being stubborn or defiant, but in reality they are not in a state where they are able to process anything around them except for w...
2025-05-17 19:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Day 2 - Distractions Beyond Our Control
Today we are going to take a look at those distractions that are beyond our control and how we can use movement away from the distraction to reduce barking. Things such as the garbage truck, school bus, or mailman are totally out of our control. They may follow a schedule that we can predict, but we have no ability to change that schedule. Other distractions such as a neighbor walking their dog passed our house may not be on a schedule or predic...
2025-05-16 19:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Day 1 - Setting Your House Up for Success
The very first step in working on barking issues is to determine the environment where the barking occurs and implement management resources to reduce or prevent the barking as much as possible during the training period. This could be anything from placing a physical barrier in place to keep the dog out of the area where barking occurs, placing a visual barrier up to prevent the dog from seeing the distraction that triggers the barking, or play...
2025-05-15 19:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The C2C Canine Coaches have put together this workshop to help all dog owners
The Barking Mad with Cookies Workshop will take place via this group & the Barking Mad Facebook Group. All you have to do is join as a free Patreon member to participate.
Each day will contain 15 mins of training provided by the Crazy2Calm Canine Coaches using games based lea...
2025-05-14 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Crazy2Calm Canine Coaces want to personally invite you to a really special event we are hosting-
the first-ever Service Dog Handler Symposium, happening online
June 19–22, 2025!
This four-day event brings together an international lineup of
trainers, behavior consultants, and SD handlers (including me!)
for conversations that matter. From emotional wellbeing to dog welfare, hard decisions to practical training tips—it’s all on the table....
2025-05-05 19:04:51 +0000 UTC
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This video demonstrates how I start to play Find It games with a dog who has never played before. Be sure to start with something easy such as dog treats your dog loves which allows them to get that rapid reward by eating what they find. The switch to a common household item that has a strong scent; empty spice containers, small containers that hold treats (Easter Eggs or small plastic box), one of your dog's favorite toys, a meds container, etc.
Play at this level where you are not u...
2025-04-09 20:17:07 +0000 UTC
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We hope you have enjoyed watching these weekly recordings created by Canine Coaches, Penny, Cindy, Kristi, & Tammy. It's been a fun project of using TEAMwork to show you how a trainer interacts with their young puppies and includes socialization to scents, sounds, sights, taste, & touch into their skills & manners training.
This week we starting building several impulse control related games that can be broken down very simple for puppies and slowly build up of the the month...
2025-03-27 20:34:38 +0000 UTC
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The number 1 distraction among those who registered is other dogs and today's information is focused on that issue! At almost 2 yrs old, Azul's biggest distraction is new dogs entering into our environment so we practice remaining calm often. Check out today's video for more information about training exercises you can do with your dog around other dogs. Then check out the games below!
Whip It or Flirt Pole Fun
You can buy a flirt pole made for dogs ...
2025-03-27 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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This week we worked on several foundations that build up to teaching our young dogs how to focus around distractions. Once fully understood, these games are often used while playing other games to train new skills to older SDiT's.
Look At That - Commonly referred to as LAT
Look At That "LAT" gives the dog something to do. It's also the start of desensitizing to triggers no matter what they are. Timing is important and as the dog starts understanding the game and i...
2025-03-26 20:46:20 +0000 UTC
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On Day 3, we take a look at the distractions our dogs get most amped up about and how we can set up training sessions in the environments where are dogs can be most successful then slowly building up to more distracting environments.
U-Turns
U-turns are important no just to teach proper heeling/loose leash walking and to avoid unwanted things, dogs, cats, strangers, or even shopping carts in stores. The basic idea is to turn quickly with your dog, in either direction.A to B/ U-T...
2025-03-26 15:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Welcome to Day 2 of the FAD Mini-Workshop!
On Day 2 we are going to be talking about the emotions our dogs feel, understanding those emotions and applying training sessions correctly to help change our dog's negative emotions into positive emotions. This video is a bit longer, but it's super important to understand how the distractions in our environments make our dogs feel. With that understanding, we can then decide how to best help them be successful in...
2025-03-25 15:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Welcome to Day 1 of the FAD Mini-Workshop!
Today we want to go over the idea of FOCUS and what it means to us, as well as get you used to the basic format of this workshop. Every day we will have an informational video created by the crazy old ladies of dog training, Cindy Campbell & Penny Beeman. The video will be roughly 1 hour long each day. We will also have 2 games for you to play each day that will help you and your dog learn to more ef...
2025-03-24 15:00:17 +0000 UTC
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The Emotional Experience with Andy Hale
This discussion to geared toward dog owners who are training their own assistance/service dog in a way that will help them consider their dog’s emotions and learn to increase their teamwork. Yooper Paws of Love and Cindy Campbell Dog Training are pleased to be collaborating with Andrew Hale to discuss a topic that is very important to us, considering our dog's emotional experience.
Topics:
Understanding the beh...
2025-03-20 15:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Follow the Leader
This task is based on a Forward Momentum Pull (FMP) One of the biggest issues I face with FMP is training the pull strength I want the dog to pull for different situations. Speeds often need to change rapidly in public settings and large crowded environments. By enlisting the help of a friend or family member, I teach a “Follow” cue which can be applied to any of our close friends and family, and once generalized a total strange...
2025-03-19 17:25:54 +0000 UTC
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Teaching forward momentum pull can be done in a variety of ways. The previous post titled Mobility Tasks: Forward Momentum & Counterbalance provides a detailed conversation about the safety of these tasks. We did want to remind you to be sure that you are keeping safety of your dog in mind when developing this task.
In this video, Belle has already been doing forward momentum pull (FMP) for several months but we are needing to refine a few things.
First we are working on givi...
2025-03-17 21:18:45 +0000 UTC
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Default Behaviors
Default behaviors are any time the dog does a specific behavior such as laying down when something in the environment cues the behavior instead of a verbal or hand signal cue. A good example of this is asking the dog to wait at the door for a cue to go through the door. Touching the door knob becomes the cue for the dog to move to the trained position and wait. Another common one is asking the dog to sit before putting a food bowl down. Prepping the food becomes the ...
2025-03-13 15:59:39 +0000 UTC
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Many SD Handlers with a Mobility Assist SD can use the help provided by a dropped item retrieve. Honestly this is one of the simplest tasks to teach as it is much like the practice sessions we have when we are training and playing the Drop, Grab, & Treat Game. The big difference in this as a task vs the game, is that in the game you basically want your dog to automatically grab the item(s) you are using for that session repeated but with the task you want your dog to first alert you that...
2025-03-12 18:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Retrieve tasks is a general term that can be split into multiple directions based on the needs of the SD Handler. Once your dog knows how to retrieve you can build up that skill to include picking up dropped items, teaching the names of commonly requested items, building distance away from the handler that the dog can go to do the task, and building duration for how long the dog can carry an item in their mouth.
Named items should be taught one at a time and can involve the items having...
2025-03-11 18:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Here is the video replay for Week 3.
In this session we discussed the importance of Puppy Routines that fit your day to day schedule. This includes potty routines, nap routines, settle on a mat, training routines, and much more.
Here are the games that we played:
Pattern Game 3, 2, 1 Treat -
Tammy & Doogan demonstrated this game for us with a video that you can find here:
2025-03-10 20:07:28 +0000 UTC
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This week we started training some very important behaviors that will build up to harder behaviors as the puppy grows older. Most of the behaviors are part of one or more of the other collections in the SDiT Puppy Collections so we will link them here.
We discussed the importance of doing some socialization around sounds with your puppy. Coach Penny likes to watch a wide variety of movies during the puppy stage that have various sounds. You can also find YouTube videos of sounds for dog...
2025-02-26 21:38:41 +0000 UTC
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There are lots of ways to potty train a puppy. And yes it's possible to do completely Force Free! This means that you don't punish the puppy for accidents and you reinforce going potty in acceptable places.
The first step in this is management! Pup is under constant supervision inside the house, or in a safe place such as a crate or x-pen when they can't be supervised.
There is a great write up about the management I used with Belle as a puppy in this ...
2025-02-24 20:00:07 +0000 UTC
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We have some pups in the group that are nearing the end of their socialization phase (under 16 weeks) and entering what I like to call the pre-teen phase from 4-6 months.
Somewhere from 4-6 months old, puppies experience a short period often known as a fear stage. During this time new or novel things are often scary to a pup. That doesn't mean pups are suddenly less confident. They simply can't handle new or novel things in this stage. During this fear stage, puppies can se...
2025-02-21 17:49:53 +0000 UTC
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There are alot of things to consider when preparing a pup for service dog training. In other posts I've shared info about socialization for all the senses and my socialization checklist. So for this one I'm going to focus on puppy visits to public places.
First and foremost, safety first! At this stage you can only visit pet friendly places. However your young puppy doesn't have all their vaccines so it's not safe to be in areas that have been frequented by unknown do...
2025-02-21 17:39:33 +0000 UTC
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Socialization is not only meeting and interacting with new people and dogs! Socialization should include all the senses; seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, & smelling everything in their world! I’ve previously talked about exposing the puppy to new environments to make their world a bit bigger and this is the way that I do that.
First plan your outing to be successful! Whether you are taking a walk or a car ride to your new environment, pack up anything y...
2025-02-21 17:36:35 +0000 UTC
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