A frictionless approach to understanding and communicating with our dog.
An amazing way to teach dog owners to train dogs that transcends dog training.
Dog rescue took the dog out of the mill, Your Dog's Best Friend took the mill out of the dog. That's teamwork!
Dog aggressive to dog impressive, thank you for helping us recover our instincts! Trust, Respect, Loyalty, Love!
Truly the dog whisperers of Minneapolis, every new situation with our dogs is an exciting new opportunity for me to show them how to succeed!
Learning to train the dogs way in puppy class was amazing. The education we got during puppy socialization was not only useful but also inspiring. If you truly believe dogs are good people, YDBF is for you!
Keep up the great work guys. Thank you for being a part of our pack!Max Bitterman - Dog Trainer/Founder
Dog Socialization Issues - Dog Aggression - Fearful dogs - Puppy Mill Dogs - Shy Dogs - Rowdy Dogs - Anxious Dogs - Disobedient Dogs - Stubborn Dogs
Puppy Training - New Dog Introductions - Doggie Match Making (finding the right dog for your family)
Therapy - Buster used to be nervous about being touched by new people, sometimes biting, sometimes slinking away. Now Buster loves his hospice visits and his visits with terminally ill dogs. Sometimes a puppy is our first friend but it takes a special puppy to be someone's last friend.
Service - Frodo lost his job as a Seeing Eye dog due to explosive outbursts as trucks and other loud vehicles passed by on the walk. Now he has his job back and not only provides Seeing Eye services but gets to go to Minneapolis schools to show off to the kids how special he is!
Teacher - Buddy holds a notorious title as the most human aggressive dog in the history of Your Dog's Best Friend. That was years ago. Today he spends his days teaching at risk dogs how to follow house rules. He is a perfect example for how dogs should treat humans and their homes.
Coaching - Cajun was a smart, young, happy go lucky pup. He has developed into a pack leader for our new dogs. He helps the timid ones grow their confidence, the reactive ones try a more social approach to relating with other dogs and with his brother Oakland on his team they have served as "first friends" to many rescue dogs as they begin their new life.
Hunting - Duke, the bird dog developed a fear of loud noises. He was forced to sit out hunting weekends for over three years. Now he is back in the field and doing what he loves and was born to do! He is currently training his puppy brother Zipper to become a great bird dog too.
Through thousands of hours of studying dogs we have experienced a few "Newton's Apple" moments that have accelerated our science & opened the door to revelations & recognitions that are more inspiring than we would have ever imagined.
Here are the two most valuable findings we have come up with. 1. your dog thinks & operates like the best people you know & 2. your dog is socially brilliant.
Congratulations! These two understandings advance you beyond 99% of dog trainers on the planet as you now have a cleaner lens to observe & learn from dogs with. If you encounter a dog trainer who "idiotizes", "brutizes" or "babyizes" your dog in their "assessment", turn and run!
It turns out many of the things that make us call someone humane: trust, respect, loyalty, love, feeding the sick & the weak, raising kids, mourning the dead etc. are things we share in common with our dogs. Things that make us call someone an animal: cruel, selfish, dishonest etc. are uniquely human. How many episodes of Unlikely Animal Friends can we watch in amazement until we realize that we are the unlikely animal friend? Next time you see a viral video of a dog saving a child from a fire or nursing another animals orphaned babies you can say, "That dog is being an animal." as you watch, not in amazement, but admiration and respect.
Realizing that dogs are better people & better parents than us allow us to get away from following the judgements of dog trainers & into the lessons of their parents. They use intimacy, honest & clarity as they teach their children right from wrong responsively as they go through life. So no need to do strategies at them or around them, you can responsively relate & communicate with them in a meaningful way. In fact, the primary source of serious behavior issues in our dogs comes from taking their babies from them & using classical conditioning as a foundation instead of healthy social etiquette.
So our takeway from all this is, if you take a baby from its mom, replace her with a parent, not an owner. That is why we teach dog raising as a foundation rather than dog training. That is why we teach dog relating for relationship building rather than dog training. This is why we are your dog's best friend.
One useful byproduct of our study is that following nature's blueprint makes it super easy for us to help our community raise puppies & find behavior solutions. So feel free to reach out. We are happy to help.
Useful Tip:If you are not sure which company to work with, a great way to select a dog trainer is to ask to meet their dog(s) in an environment that would require them to be well adjusted in a way that you would like your dog to be. The answers you will likely get put on display what makes us most different from our dogs. Humans often live in medicinal perceptions & stories while the other animals live in natures narrative AKA reality. Translation: you will hear some funny excuses. ;)