COACHING & CONSULTING
Kinfolk Canine offers
private consultations and personalized lessons
by appointment
Contact us for details and rates, or to set up an initial assessment.
(~20 minutes by phone, free!)
Laura helps her clients develop behavioral fundamentals in their puppies and adolescent dogs, such as: play etiquette, bite inhibition, handling tolerance, impulse control, ability to settle, willingness to share resources, and boundary respect.
After an initial consult, Laura can coach you on establishing a variety of verbal and visual cues to expedite your efforts to lead and direct your youngster in the specific ways that best suit your circumstances and lifestyle. We start working in calmer contexts, typically moving from indoors to outdoors. You will steadily gain trust in your dog's responsiveness to your cues in all contexts, and because we keep this process fun for the dog, learning new cues becomes a game in itself.
Like people, dogs can go entire lifetimes without reaching emotional maturity or realizing their full potential. In other words, there's always room for improvement! Laura works with adult dogs and their people to tackle behavioral challenges that often arise at home or out in public. Whether your doggie drama manifests as leash pulling and reactivity, jumping up, counter-surfing, illicit chewing, excessive barking, bullying, extreme shyness, fearfulness, anxiety, or in other ways, Kinfolk Canine is poised to support you in resolving or managing it!
Laura bases her methods on the latest science of animal learning and canine cognition. Therefore, she maximizes the use of positive reinforcement as opposed to force-based training. If you tend toward militancy, please look elsewhere!
She has sought out knowledge and know-how from world-class dog trainers and canine experts in academia at these venues:
Scent Detection Dogs in Conservation Research
Center for Wildlife Studies (online, July 2021)
at San Francisco State University, CA (April 2019)
Canine Science Symposium
at the SPCA in San Francisco, CA (April 2018)
First International Canine Science Conference
at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ (October 2017)
International Association of Canine Professionals
Educational Conference in Ontario, CA (September 2016)