Mountain View Dog Training

Welcome!

Mountain View Dog Training has helped hundreds of people train their dogs to be the wonderful companions that only dogs can be. Our classes are held in beautiful Rappahannock County, Virginia, and our approach is positive, supportive, and fun for both the canine and the human members of each team.

American Hairless Terrier "Breeze" in Puppy Agility class, summer 2009. Photo courtesy of Joe Asero

Our obedience training instructors have scores of years of experience training both dogs and humans, and continue their own education by attending other classes and seminars on operant conditioning (”clicker training”), behavioral issues, and problem solving, in addition to reading books and watching DVDs on these and other subjects. In this way we remain on the cutting edge of behavioral learning and training, and our doggy students reap the benefits from this.

We’re fortunate to live in an enlightened era vis a vis dog training - a happy farewell to the methods of years past, with force training, jerking and “correcting” dogs for not doing things for which they weren’t trained. The present focus on rewarding a dog for desirable behavior and ignoring incorrect responses (or “bad” behavior) is so much healthier for both our dogs and us!

At Mountain View we love agility. It’s more fun than a barrel of puppies! We’re also serious about agility competition (with quite a few grains of sensitivity and sensibility) and strive to teach our human students to respect their canine athlete partners, to give them tasks they can understand and achieve, and to have fun while playing the agility game. And that’s capital F-U-N for both dog and handler!