A Focus On Safety
Safety and engagement are at the heart of everything we do at Pups on Passyunk. To continue providing the most professional dog walks in Philadelphia, we recently held a workshop with Opportunity Barks, one of the top dog trainers in the city. We provide our walkers extensive training before they start walks with us, and we also hold ongoing learning and development workshops such as this one.
Our staff’s most recent training session with Opportunity Barks in June allowed us to practice different leash handling techniques and gain insight into some specific dog behaviors.
Our main goal for this training session was to learn how we can better manage dogs when they become reactive on the leash. Dogs love to lunge at skateboards, squirrels, cars, other dogs… you name it! In order to ensure all our pups are as safe and comfortable as possible on their walks, we want to reduce reactivity and keep them as calm as possible. We worked on different techniques to help improve focus and to encourage loose leash walking. These exercises provide great mental stimulation too, which also helps to tire your dog out!
Importance of Proper Equipment
We also talked about different equipment options that might be appropriate for some dogs and reviewed how to properly use them to encourage responsiveness. We discussed harnesses and leads that may be appropriate for certain pups, and we may sometimes recommend different equipment if we think it will help.
We’re excited to see the positive changes that come around as a result of our training! We'll be holding another workshop with Opportunity Barks soon!