Plan for Success 2022

This is our Yooper Paws New Year's Resolution for 2022, "Plan for Success!"

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not much for making resolutions which have a history of not lasting more then a week or two.  I'm not a fan of "big" changes either!  Instead think of this as more of a promise to everyone else; my family, my dogs, my clients & their dogs!  So here are just a few of the plans I have in place for 2022! (And they are not in order of importance!)

• For myself and my family, I will be planning to spend some individual based time sharing experiences that are mutually enjoyable.  This means that I'm going to be looking for ways to have fun despite my physical, financial, and sometimes distance apart from those that matter most to me.  This is part of my, "Be the BEST I can be!" plan.
• For my dogs, especially Azul but Cam too, I'm going to focus on training sessions that play to their strengths as individual dogs.  I pretty much took the last year off, when it comes to detailed plans with both my dogs to allow Azul time to grow up some.  But now that he is almost 2, I'm going to be switching gears to a "fine tuning" mode to help him become the best adult, fully trained Service Dog he can be.  No more having training sessions that are focused on solely meeting his physical and mental needs for training sessions.  This leads to hap-hazzard sessions that end up moving more slowly, so instead we will be focusing on just a few things and working on them regularly in more focused but still game based training sessions that are fun for us both.  Watch for a more detailed plan about this in a future post.
• For my clients and their amazing dogs, I will no longer be charging a fee for a formal written training plan!  For all of 2022, I will offer this service for free to any of my clients that request it with their regularly paid services.  That means my digital based and local clients can ask for a written training plan based on the training sessions we've had at any time.  It might take me a week or two to complete it, but I will as soon as I can.  You might just have to remind me if you ask at the end of a busy training session or if we chat about it during a migraine.
• And for the few people who follow this Yooper Paws website or our Facebook Page, I'm going to be focusing on a monthly theme.  This will vary based on things that I'm working on with my dogs and/or my clients dogs, but here are a few topics that I will start with.
• January - Planning for Success - This will be tips and tricks designed to help you create better training sessions at home and out in the world with your dog.
• February - Focus on Behaviors - This will involve teaching you as a dog lover how to change those pesky behaviors that drive you nuts into behaviors you will LOVE your dog to do.
• March - Spring Fever Madness - This will involve a greater understanding of why our dogs do the the things they do every spring regardless of age, sex, or breed.
• April - Foolish Follies - This is going to be more of a myth busting month where I talk about some of the silly things a dog trainer hears quite often and regularly comes to you as advice from someone who "once trained a dog, and that tip worked for them!"
• May - Avoiding the Maybe's that are commonly found in dog training.  You're going to definitely want to be around for this month, especially if you have a puppy or are training a young Service Dog!
• June - The Nose Knows - This is a repeat of a series I did last year about the amazing power behind a dog's nose and how we as dog lovers can use that power to our favor, and that of our dogs.
• July - Independence Matters - This month is going to be focused around teaching our dogs to make good decisions that will make our every day lives more enjoyable together.  We will also dive into the whole "intelligent disobedience" topic in dog training.

I have a few other things in the works at Yooper Paws too!  For starters, I'm going to be enhancing my "at your own pace" training lessons geared toward all my online clients using a new training format.  The first of those is going to be the "Positively Puppy Paws" lessons for people with dogs less then 6 months of age.  Shortly after that change is complete, I will also be moving the "Crazy Teens" guides & "+R SD Tasks" training series to the new format as well.  Completely new for 2022 will be a series of workgroups designed around helping small groups of dog owners tackle some of the bigger training challenges.  The first workgroup will be focused on teaching Service Dog Handlers how to train their Service Dog to do scent based medical alerts, which starts January 10th for the low fee of $75.  I've already been asked to do a similar workgroup for training visual based, or observed behavior driven alerts to Service Dog Handlers.  This will cover medical needs that relate to some types of seizures, anxiety, PTSD, and other things that people do not realize they are doing when they need help from their Service Dog.  And I will continue to expand the SD Tips page to include even more great tips to helping your Service Dog Team become the best they can be.  I'm happy to do other workgroups based on client need throughout the year, but I need YOU to tell me what your biggest hurdles are that you would like help with, and they don't have to be Service Dog related!

Are you excited for all the 2022 will bring?  I know I am!