In-Home Training & Behavior Modification

Whether your dog needs to learn a few basic cues or has more serious (or not-so-serious) behavior issues, we can help. Happy Hound Training's private, in-home lessons offer customized plans tailored to meet your goals. Our group dog training classes have limited enrollment to ensure you get plenty of one-on-one instruction.


Jill proudly utilizes modern, science-based, force-free training methods, which is just a fancy way of saying that she's a skilled dog trainer who doesn't need to use any pain, fear or intimidation to train your dog. Her primary training tool is positive reinforcement, which employs rewards (praise, affection, toys, treats, etc.) to motivate your dog to succeed. Positive reinforcement training motivates dogs to learn, stimulates their thinking, builds confidence, improves your relationship with them, creates lasting results and best of all, makes training fun! Dogs learn better when they use their noggins to figure out how to earn rewards rather than doing the minimum to avoid punishment.

What's the difference between training and behavior modification?

Dog obedience training teaches your dog to perform specific cued behaviors, while behavior modification addresses your dog’s reaction to a particular person, place, or thing. Although behavior modification may include training obedience cues such as stay, these cues are used to build self-control, manage situations, and engage thinking. 

How do I know which one my dog needs?

If you’re interested in training your dog to perform cues (e.g. sit, down, come, etc.), then obedience training will help you reach your goals. Behavior modification addresses issues like fearfulness or aggression. Happy Hound Training can help whether your dog needs obedience training, behavior modification, or both!

How does behavior modification work? 

A common error is to address a presenting behavior without treating the underlying cause. A good comparison would be to treat pneumonia with cough syrup. Sure, you’ll get rid of the cough, but the underlying illness would still be there! Furthermore, the pneumonia would likely worsen since the primary presenting behavior (coughing) would be suppressed. Eliminating your dog’s aggressive responses like growling, lunging or biting will not resolve his aggression – it will only suppress the obvious signals. Your dog will still experience the same emotions but he’ll lose his ability to communicate through warning signals. This is usually the case when dogs “bite out of the blue” – they were previously punished for growling.


Behavior modification training investigates why your dog reacts the way he does, as well as what happens just before he responds. When we know what is triggering your dog to react and why, we are able to intervene early and address the underlying cause.

How do I get started?

Behavior modification begins with a 2-hour initial meeting to evaluate your situation, gather background information, assess your dog's issues, and discuss your training goals. After the evaluation you’ll get a 3-5 page customized report that includes training recommendations. 


Private, in-home obedience training and behavior modification are tailored to your needs: We can work on as many or as few cues or issues as you like. Since most behavior issues occur in the home, we’ll come to you.