Is Your Dog Full of Sit?

Big dogs, little dogs, fluffy dogs, sleek dogs, and dogs with floppy ears or pointed ones, if you’ve got any kind of dog, Jeremy Clayton can train it. Using the various methods under his belt, Clayton can turn any dog into the perfect companion. What does Clayton do that turns pooches into loyal, well-behaved dogs? Using his three-step obedience training program, Clayton gauges what approach will work best for your dog, but he makes sure they get all the tail-tell hallmarks needed to be the best-behaved dog on the block.

Clayton’s dog obedience program, Full of Sit,  is centered on getting the dog to be obedient, while still wanting to do the work. He has found the perfect balance to get the dogs on the permanent good dog list. During the Basic Obedience level, Clayton told us that “I start off treat based. I use a ton of treats for the obedience so when we're teaching the sits, the downs, the come, and retrieve, stuff like that, it’s very positive and is very treat oriented. I do have to put some type of a training collar on them whether it’s a pinch collar or an electronic collar, to begin with.” Pinch collars, or electric collars, when used correctly in training, do not hurt dogs. As with any other type of collar, making sure it is fitted properly and, in this case, used only while trying to correct a dog's behavior they’ll learn what the need to do. Clayton, as the owner of six dogs himself, would never do anything that was not in the best interest of the dog or dogs he’s working with. 

So how exactly do you know if you need to go through an obedience program with your pup? Over time, Clayton has made a few observations that may be able to help you determine if your dog needs Full of Sit too, “almost every dog—when I show up to somebody's house for the first session—is jumping up on me. They're almost always pulling on a leash. So instead of walking politely next to you, they're like trying to drag you down the street. That's two of the most common ones. Some other stuff that's fairly common is, for instance, they're harassing the other dogs that are in the house, or they're destroying furniture or whatever. That's probably the most common problems that I encounter.” If any of those things sound familiar to you, Full of Sit could be what you're looking for. Sometimes it’s just that your dog has “bad behavior issues and that's the initial reason most people contact me. It’s because they want to figure out how I can get my dog to stop doing these things. They’ll tell me ‘they're chewing up my couch,’ or ‘they're getting in my trash’ or something like that and I can address those issues. Altogether we just kind of manage all the issues with the obedience training. The obedience training is there, but I help people learn how to just manage their dogs better all around.” 

Desi Gambos, one of Clayton’s clients, explained why she knew Clayton’s method was the best for her dogs, “Jeremy is really good at conveying to the owners why dogs do what they do, how to, kind of, redirect the bad behavior into something good. He does it in a way that people understand because not a lot of people really understand the root of dog behavior. I think that's probably the biggest reason why it’s successful, the owners understand not just the dogs,” but how to communicate in their language. Gambos has known Clayton for about three years now—he helped train a few of her dogs such as Sammy; a rather unmotivated pup. In this case, Clayton had to figure out how to motivate him, “We have to get the dogs to want to work for it, otherwise, we’re creating a dog that just resents doing anything.” After going through the Full of Sit Obedience Training, Gambos was happy to report that, “he's motivated. He wants to please. We do a lot of trick training such as getting me a beverage or my cell phone for me.”

No matter the temperament of the dog, Clayton knows what it takes to train them to be obedient. He explained how the differences in personalities relate to how he trains them. Problem dogs, the ones that jump and pull, “the first thing we do is teach them that you guys need to knock that stuff off.” Dogs that are really shy and withdrawn—who don't tolerate a real harsh correction, you “just withhold the food. A dog's mindset, when you show them a piece of food and get their attention with it, they automatically think, `Hey, you're going to give me that piece of food.’ For a nice dog like that, when they make a mistake, we just say no, and we take the food away from the dogs, hiding it behind our back, so the dog can't see it. They’ll think ‘Oh, crap, you just took my food from me. So maybe I'm not going to make that same mistake again.` Because now it's costing them food.” Dogs that are more pushy and outgoing can be more “toy or tug motivated and not as interested in food. if they don't do what I want to do, I simply take the toy away from them. If the dog can handle a harsh correction, then we use the leash to correct the dog. So an example would be if the dog was in a sit, and they went to get up, I would just step towards the dog and say no, when I would pull straight up on the leash, and push dogs butt back down, getting them to sit.”

Clayton wants the people and animals that go through his program to succeed. He has goals that get completed at every step of the program; you can’t just start at level three. Everything you do is based on what you learn in step one of the obedience training.“I like my dogs to want to work for free and not to hate working for me. As the training progresses and we do start to phase out the treats, it becomes what I call true obedience.” Getting to the state of true obedience takes time and effort on both the owner and the dog’s part. “I split the training up into different levels; by the time we're on level three, which is the last level, the dogs are working completely off-leash, so you can't correct the dogs. You're also not allowed to have food at all on your person. So you can’t have treats in your pocket.” Clayton says that at this point in the training, “If you've done your due diligence and trained properly, you and the dogs are going to succeed.”

Jeremy Clayton’s Full of Sit Dog Obedience program works with you to train your dog to be the ultimate companion. Clayton told us that “I hope, well, I like to think anyway, that I help people with their problems.” Dogs that he works with learn what it takes to be an obedient, loyal companion. When it comes to training the dog's repetition is key, Clayton explained that “People say not to humanize dogs, and to a degree, yes, but you have to understand that there are a lot like children, and they don't learn on the first try. It takes a lot of repetition and they think oh they’ve done it once they know what it means. You might have just gotten lucky. Then they get upset and they get frustrated. You have to have a lot of patience. A lot of patience to work with dogs.” Patience is something Clayton has in spades. He loves dogs and it shows in how well he works with them. Brandi Hamblin, who went through the program with her dog Dgoto, wants people to understand that they need to respect dogs, even with training “be smart around dogs especially other peoples’ dogs.”

If you’re interested in Jeremy Clayton and Full of Sit check out his website at fullofsit.com or give him a call at 901-422-0264. Clayton also works with the Covington Animal Rescue Effort’s (C.A.R.E.) Prison Paws program that helps inmates train dogs. If you're interested in learning more about that program call 901-475-1908.