Training Overview

From puppy ...

The Blue Ridge K-9 Training Center offers obedience training for all ages, sizes, and types of dogs. Beginning with Puppy Kindergarten classes for puppies under 5 months of age, the instructors at the Blue Ridge K-9 Training Center will work with you to ensure that your puppy is well socialized and able to confidently go on into Basic Obedience classes. While helpful, Puppy K is not required before taking other classes.

Young adolescent and adult dogs and their owners - whether they've attended Puppy K or not - may start with Basic Obedience classes. Basic Obedience classes continue the skills learned in Puppy Kindergarten while furthering the owners' abiity to control and communicate with their pet.

To adult dog ...

Once you and your dog have graduated from a Basic Obedience class, you will have developed a camaraderie and be working as a team. But does training stop there? It doesn't have to! The Blue Ridge K-9 Training Center also offers Intermediate and Novice level Obedience classes. In these classes, you learn to trust each other and develop the skills necessary to show your dog competitively. Another fun and rewarding class is Rally Obedience.

With dedicated instructors ...

The instructors at the Blue Ridge K-9 Training Center are active in the community ... they help to provide educational presentations for local school children, demonstrations at community activities, and often assist with fundraising activities and volunteer work at local animal shelters, nursing homes, and other facilities for adults and children. See a slide show of a demonstration they did here.

For those with special problems or needs, the staff at the Blue Ridge K-9 Training Center will happily meet with you and your dog for private lessons.

Some dogs and handlers go on to competition in Conformation, Obedience, Rally, Agility, and other dog events, where success is recognized with the award of a "title." Why? Here's what one writer thinks...

What Is a Title, Really?

—Sandy Mowery, Front & Finish magazine

Not just a brag, not just a stepping stone to a higher title, not just an adjunct to competitive scores; a title is a tribute to the dog that bears it, a way to honor the dog, an ultimate memorial.

It will remain in the record and in the memory for about as long as anything is this world can remain. Few humans will do as well or better.

And though the dog himself doesn’t know or care that his achievements have been noted, a title says many things in the world of humans, where such things count. A title says your dog was intelligent, adaptable, and good natured. It says that your dog loved you enough to do the things that please you, however crazy they may have sometimes seemed.

And, a title says that you loved your dog, that you loved to spend time with him because he was a good dog, that you believed in him enough to give him yet another chance when he failed and that, in the end, your faith was justified. A title proves that your dog inspired you to that special relationship enjoyed by so few; that in a world of disposable creatures, this dog with a title was greatly loved, and loved greatly in return.

And when that dear short life is over, the title remains as a memorial of the finest kind, the best you can give to a deserving friend, volumes of praise in one small set of initials after the name. An obedience title is nothing less than love and respect, given and received, and recorded permanently.

 

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