Our Approach

At 4QK9, we strongly emphasize starting your training journey inside of your home, even if your goals involve being out and about.

• We believe it is important to create a solid foundation of trust and a consistent communication system with dogs to provide clarity and minimize confusion.

• Dogs are constantly absorbing information, so training is always happening, not just once per week at a training session. For this reason, we like to look at the whole picture of life with your dog.

• We believe dogs should be treated as individuals and training styles should be adapted for each dog and handler, to optimize long term results. 

• Building a strong, mutual relationship with your dog is one of the most important ways to start seeing changes, so we start there.

• We design an individualized training program for each dog based on:

  • Client goals/needs 

  • Client lifestyle 

  • Dog motivation and temperament

  • Relationship building

• We utilize the ‘Four Quadrants of Operant Conditioning’ as a component of our training. This method adds and subtracts motivations to encourage/discourage behaviors. In this context, “positive” means to add, and “negative” means to take away. 

  • Owners and dogs can benefit greatly from understanding each of the quadrants and how they impact the dogs behavior.