About The Sport Dog Society
If you are on this page, something is not working, and you have probably been carrying it on your own for longer than you would admit to anyone.
Maybe you dread the walk. Maybe you have stopped inviting people over. Maybe you sat in the car outside your own house last week listening to your dog howling through the front door and felt something close to despair.
We want to say this clearly before anything else. You are not failing. You are not too soft, too inconsistent, or too late. You are someone who loves an animal and has not yet been shown how that animal actually thinks. That is a solvable problem, and it is the only kind of problem we work on.
Why we see it this way
Luke did not come to this from the usual direction.
Luke spent nine years in corporate technology, in sales, consulting and teaching. Before that he taught skiing in the Vail Valley in Colorado. Both jobs were really the same job. Take someone who is frustrated, frightened or stuck, and move them to competent without breaking their confidence on the way.
Luke came from a family of physicians, teachers and therapists, so he grew up surrounded by people whose work was understanding other people.
What he kept noticing was that it did not matter much who he was teaching. Big humans, little humans, dogs. The learning system underneath is the same one. Change the language, not the principles.
Alongside Luke's own experience, our work is grounded in the life's work of Dr. Ian Dunbar, whose research shaped how a generation of us understand canine learning.
What we actually believe
Resolving unwanted behavior comes down to two things.
The first is grounding. A dog that is flooded, frightened or permanently braced cannot learn anything, and neither can you. Before we change a single behavior we bring the whole system back to center.
The second is interrupt and redirect. We step in before the unwanted behavior completes, and we move that energy towards something useful instead. Repeat it enough and the good behavior becomes the habit, at which point we take the training wheels off and let it run on its own feedback loop.
This is also why we do not lean on aversive methods. They only work when your timing is perfect and you are right there at the moment it happens. Can you be on top of your dog every hour of every day? Neither can we. So we build something that holds up when you are not watching.
One more thing we will say honestly, because it comes up in almost every household we work in. Our dogs reflect us. The tension in the home, the rushing, the worry, the thing nobody is saying out loud. The dog feels all of it and often carries it for everyone. Part of our job is noticing that gently, and helping the whole household settle, not just the animal.
What working with us is like
Once the fundamentals are in and your plan is running, you will be surprised how much you can handle yourself with nothing more than a Zoom call to check your thinking.
You get listened to first.
Your history, your dog's history, the whole picture. No judgment and no lecture. Everyone is doing their best in a chaotic world
You get a real diagnosis.
After thousands of hours of training and coaching we have seen most of it before. You get an honest read of what is happening and why, not a generic program
You get a plan we run together.
Built for your dog, your household and your life. We are there while you do it, not on the end of an email
You get everything in writing.
A detailed recap of what we worked on, with checklists, how-tos and links to every tool we recommend, searchable so you can find what you need in the moment you need it
You get continued support.
Phone and Zoom coaching as we go, and access to our online training system if you want to go deeper at your own pace
Who we are best for
We work best with people who want to understand their dog rather than simply control them. If you are willing to do a little between sessions and you want to know why something works rather than just being told to do it, we will get on well.
We are probably not your people if you are looking for someone to take the dog away and return it fixed, or for a quick correction that makes the symptom disappear without touching the cause. That is not what we do and we would rather say so now than take your money.
How we work
- No judgment, ever. Whatever is happening in your home, we have almost certainly seen it
- Nothing aversive, and nothing you would be uncomfortable explaining to your children
- We tell you the truth about what is achievable and how long it will take
- If we are not the right people for your situation, we will tell you that too