Do you have a dog who’s so thrilled to see her people (even if you just went out to the mailbox), she celebrates reunions with way too much enthusiasm? Like most people, you may respond to jumping with No! Off! or Down! Or the one that leaves me (almost) speechless: No Jump!  . . . Wouldn’t you prefer to have no jumping in the first place? You just need to teach your dog what to do instead. . . . It can be done in one weekend. This is a simple training process that will show you the magic of clicker training.

The mother of all behaviors, as they say, is attention. If you can’t get your dog’s attention, you can’t expect to get the responses you want. But targeting is definitely the Swiss army knife of behaviors. When your dog can target, she has a tool with an amazing variety of terrifically useful functions. Yes, soon your dog will be able to uncork wine bottles and file her own nails! Well, almost.