Teach your dog to control their sh!t.

I’m Jess Okon, a “Dog Witch” aka dog behavior expert and trainer with over 15 years of experience. My goal is to create harmony on both ends of the leash so your dog can join you on all your adventures! I’m an expert in dog body language and bring a holistic, mindful, energetic approach to the dog/human relationship.

Together we’ll unlock the most engaging relationship with your dog built on clear communication, set boundaries and lots of love.

The lack of impulse control is the root of most problem behaviors our dogs display like jumping on people, running out the door, stealing food, and chasing birds down the street.

Calm responses is not a natural behavior for most dogs (or most humans). In this section you'll learn how to use real-world rewards, and teach your dog how to make thoughtful responses instead of impulsive reactions. This concept can be applied to almost every scenario in a dog's world, from feeding time to play to how they watch birds in the park, even how the meet new people and dogs.

This is an essential skill for all dogs, and most critical for dogs that display any kind of reactivity, it's potential for growth and practice is limitless and can be applied into reverse luring and cooperative care at a more advanced level.

It's a game of patience on the human end of the leash, so take a deep breath, grab your treats, leash and let's go! You're in luck as this is one of my favorite things to teach 😎

We're asking a lot of our dogs to behave in a very human world. Teaching them HOW to make good choices while meeting their needs as dogs can unlock a new level of life with your dogs. I can’t take credit for this game, it was created and shared by renowned agility trainer, Susan Garret. This game “It’s Yer Choice” is the core game that can be applied to almost any scenario in which your dog will need to use their brains and keep their sh!t together, in other words - have some impulse control.

Getting focus on leash requires a lot of patience and clean timing. Our goal is to freely and excitedly reward our dog the instant they look in our direction. This should start in the home with the dog on leash and setting yourself up for success by wearing a treat pouch or setting up bowls of treats around the house so you can reward your dog for eye contact as often as possible.

This is the foundation for Auto Check-ins and recall games.

Here you can see Ada is struggling to find a settle. We're using this impulse control game to capture calm, and set the expectation of just hanging out in public.

The next level of this behavior will turn into what we call an "Off Switch"

By transferring the location of the treats we can shift the dogs focus to the floor and away from our hands. Start this with kibble and then start to add in Higher value rewards to increase the challenge.

Dog introductions should be done to set both dogs up for success, in a passive manner without a whole lot of fanfare.

No matter how friendly your dog is, running up to a stranger (human or canine) and getting in their face is rude. As with everything else we are teaching our dogs, being passive about new dogs and people is no different.

I like to start introductions with movement, like a pack walk or in the case of this video a large circle around where each dog gets the chance the be the sniffer. This passive introduction teaches our dogs that we expect them to focus on their human and still maintain composure even in the presence of a new friend.

Once both dogs have relaxed and there is no tension on leash is when it is safe to drop leash and allow the dogs to move towards each other.

Start far apart and gradually reduce the distance between dogs,if your dog gets to a point that they will no longer respond to your verbal cues or won't take treats, we've gone too far, too fast. Back up and slow down. Remember the dogs set the pace of learning, not the humans.