Amy’s Mountain Dog Training’s Approach and Methods for Training Your Dog

Amy’s Mountain Dog Training believes in using positive reinforcement, force-free, pain-free, and fear-free training, which is backed by scientific research and has also been proven to train any dog. Force-free and positive reinforcement dog training are the most effective methods of dog training because they focus on rewarding your pet for good behavior, rather than punishing bad behavior.

Our belief system is one of the gentlest ones out there for training dogs. Amy’s Mountain Dog Training doesn’t believe in using choke collars, shock collars, or any correction—no punishment, such as yelling or hitting a dog. We are choke-free, shock-free, and prong-free. These kinds of tools and methods can be very detrimental to dogs and can affect their mental, emotional and physical health. It can worsen any existing behavioral problems. It can also cause new ones to appear. It can also damage the dog's relationship with their owners. 

It can also make dogs even more fearful and scared of situations in their everyday lives. Positive reinforcement and force-free training methods have the opposite effect on dogs. Most dogs feel comfortable with this training approach and are not fearful or scared. Force-free training will decrease all behavioral problems over time if the proper training methods are used. It shouldn’t cause new behavioral problems to occur.

Here is an example of the difference between force-free training and actual force training:

When using punishment and force, you are constantly giving the dog leash corrections while walking by pulling on the dog's choke collar. You are forcing the dog into situations that it is uncomfortable with and doesn’t know how to escape or go to a safe place to relax. 

If a dog doesn’t like to be around other dogs or people, and you are forcing the dog to be around others, they are much more likely to show or develop behavioral issues that will turn out to be negative. If you were to use force-free and positive reinforcement training methods when walking, you wouldn’t be giving the dog leash corrections or pulling on the dog's collar. Instead, you would redirect the dog or correct the leash pulling by stopping when the dog starts to pull, turning around and walking in the other direction, or stopping and waiting for the dog to regroup before you continue walking. If a dog doesn’t like to be around other people or dogs, you will work at the dog's pace and slowly get closer to other people or dogs. If the dog is stressed or overwhelmed, you back off and give the dog a chance to regroup and relax again. When doing this, you are training the dog or helping the dog to handle situations at their own pace. This takes a lot of patience, time and training. 

The results are worth it! You will not have a dog that has developed new behavioral issues. Instead, the behavioral problems will have decreased, and you will have a relaxed, calm and secure dog.