What Is Balanced Training?

“Your dog is only as balanced as your household.”

— Courtney Foster-Donahue, co-founder of Argos Dogworks

I've received a few inquiries about the tools I use and how effective they are. In this demo, I first use a normal buckle collar and nylon leash, then a slip lead, and finally a prong collar secured with a carabiner. In the past, Ruby was very bad walking on leash.

Balanced Training

Balanced training uses a combination of positive reinforcement such as food, clickers, praise, and touch, and negative reinforcement such as spatial, verbal, and physical pressure to clearly communicate with a dog what is wanted and what is undesirable. 

To be successful, all teams must work together to achieve the same goal. If owner, trainer and dog are on separate pages, then nothing is accomplished. Our goal is to teach you how to train your own dog to eliminate existing problems and prevent future bad behaviors from starting. We accomplish this through regular, structured exercise, rules and boundaries, and addressing nutritional and emotional needs, plus a wide variety of tools, praise and consequences. Each dog and owner are different and need a specific program tailored just for them.

We believe in correctly, safely, and humanely using any tool in the toolbox that the dog responds best to. Some of the tools we use are: tone of voice, body language, flat buckle collar, prong collar, verbal markers, food, dressage whip, "bonker", e-collar/remote training collar, slip lead, pet convincer, muzzle, dominant dog collar, and martingale collar.

If you have any issue with these tools, please feel free to ask why. We'd love to show you and educate you on how to properly and humanely use each of them and see the benefits. But if you feel these tools and methods aren't what you're looking for, then we can refer you to other trainers in the area that might be more suited to your style.

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