Training Spot

Vote for Training Spot as Best Dog Trainer in Eugene

🐾 Vote for Training Spot: Best of Eugene! 🐾

Eugene Weekly’s Best of Eugene voting is open, and we’d love your support!

Every day our team gets to cheer on pet parents and their pups as they build skills, confidence, and connection. Your vote helps more local families find kind, force-free training.

How to vote:

🐕 Go to Vote.EugeneWeekly.com

🐕 Find Businesses → Best Dog Trainer

🐕 🐾 Vote for Training Spot: Best of Eugene! 🐾

Thank you for being part of our community. We couldn’t do it without you and your amazing dogs!

👉 http://Vote.EugeneWeekly.com

🦇 Today is World Rabies Day—and it’s an especially important reminder for Oregon pet owners this year.

Rabies cases are up significantly in Oregon. By September 1, 30 bats had tested positive for rabies statewide, compared with 11 during all of 2025. Five positive cases have been reported in Lane County, and most recently, a bat found in the Albany area on September 22 tested positive.

While most bats are healthy (and an important part of our ecosystem!), you can’t tell whether a bat has rabies just by looking at it.

The best way to protect your pets? Keep their rabies vaccinations up to date. 🐾

If you’re not sure when your dog or cat is due, check their records or contact your veterinarian. And if your pet ever has contact with a bat, call your vet right away.

Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms develop—but it’s preventable. ❤️

Take a minute today to check that vaccine due date!

Our Focus & Fun group really emphasized the FUN part of class this week! 😂💛

One of the best things about training is that it doesn’t have to end once you’ve finished your classes. Focus & Fun gives our Dog3 graduates a place to keep learning, practice their skills, try new things, and — apparently — crawl through giant yellow cheese sculptures with their dogs. 😂

This drop-in group is all about continuing to build skills and connection while having a good time together.

And we’ve got exciting news for those who haven’t been able to make our Wednesday noon group… Focus & Fun is now also available Wednesdays at 7 PM with Tiffany! 🎉

If you’ve graduated Dog3 and have been looking for a way to keep the fun going, we’d love to see you there! 🐾💛

👻 Getting old doesn’t have to be spooky! 🐾

As our dogs get older, their needs can change. Maybe they’re slower getting up, hesitant to jump into the car, not hearing quite as well, or even seeming a little confused by things that never bothered them before.

But there’s a lot we can do to help our senior dogs continue to feel comfortable, confident, and engaged. 💛

Join us for our upcoming DOGTalk:

🎃 Getting Old Doesn’t Have to Be Spooky: Supporting Your Dog as They Age

We’ll talk about changes in mobility, cognition, and sensory abilities, plus ways to adapt your dog’s environment, routines, activities, and enrichment as they age.

📅 October 23 at 6 PM
📍 Training Spot — 90 Lawrence Street
🎟️ $25 — all proceeds benefit Many miles rescue !

Whether your dog already has a distinguished gray muzzle or you simply want to know what to expect down the road, we’d love to have you join us. 🐾

Because getting older may bring changes—but it doesn’t have to be scary. 🎃

Sign up with this link: https://trainingspot.us/events/

🐾 TRAINING TIP: Your dog isn’t giving you a hard time. They’re having a hard time.

When our dogs bark, lunge, jump, pull, or seem to completely lose their minds, it’s easy to think:

“How do I get them to stop?”

But first, try asking:

“Why is this happening?”

Are they afraid? Frustrated? Overexcited? Overwhelmed by the environment? Or do they simply not have the skills for this situation yet?

Behavior is information.

A dog barking from fear may need something very different from a dog barking out of frustration. Understanding the why helps us figure out what our dogs actually need—and gives us a better place to start training.

This doesn’t mean ignoring difficult or unsafe behavior. It means addressing the reason behind it instead of only trying to stop what we see.

So next time your dog is struggling, try asking:

💭 “What is making this hard for my dog right now?”

That little shift can change the whole training session. 🐶💛

When people think about beginning dog training, they often think about the end result: a dog who comes when called, walks nicely on leash, settles when asked, and listens to their person.

But we have to build the foundation first. 🐾

Early training isn’t about seeing how many cues your dog can learn. It’s about helping your dog understand how training works — and helping YOU learn how to communicate, reinforce the behaviors you want, and break new skills into achievable pieces.

Those little foundation skills might not always look impressive, but they’re the building blocks for so much more.

That’s exactly what we work on in Dog1. 💛

We’re not looking for perfection. We’re helping dogs and their people build the skills they need to keep learning together — in class and long after it’s over.

If you and your dog are ready to start building that foundation, our upcoming Dog1 classes have space! 🐶🐾

🐾 Therapy Team Spotlight: Ginny & Shaina

From memory care and assisted living to hospitals, rehab facilities, and beyond, Ginny and Shaina have been putting their Therapy Dog Prep skills to work! 💙

Since completing class, the pair have become a certified therapy dog team, and Ginny says what she’s most proud of is the team they’ve become together—and Shaina’s mellow, friendly demeanor.

Shaina has already visited residents, patients, and hospital staff, with even more adventures ahead. The team is preparing for events at the University of Oregon and opportunities to read with elementary school students. 📚🐾

Ginny describes Shaina perfectly:

“Shaina has a calming presence. When ‘working,’ she’s a rock star.”

And when she clocks out? Apparently the mischievous streak comes right back. 😂 Their latest project is learning a new trick: crawl!

We absolutely love getting updates from our Therapy Dog Prep alumni and seeing all the different ways these teams go on to support their communities. Congratulations, Ginny & Shaina! 💙

Interested in doing therapy work with your dog? Our Therapy Dog Prep class helps teams build the skills they’ll need to pursue therapy dog certification and feel confident working together in real-world environments.

🐾 Therapy Dog Prep: Where Are They Now? 🐾

We LOVE getting updates from teams who have gone through our Therapy Dog Prep class, so we thought it was time to start sharing a few of them! 💛

First up: Jordan & Cooper!

When Jordan and Cooper first attempted their Alliance of Therapy Dogs test, they weren’t quite ready yet. So they went back to training, joined us for Therapy Dog Prep, and kept working together.

And now… Cooper passed his Alliance of Therapy Dogs test! 🎉

Even better? Their evaluator had seen Cooper during their first testing attempt and specifically commented on the remarkable improvement in Cooper’s attentiveness to Jordan since then. 🥹

They’re currently waiting for the final pieces of the certification process before they can officially begin volunteering, but Cooper already has another important job lined up: occasionally joining Jordan at work to provide a little extra comfort and a whole lot of smiles. ❤️

We’re so proud of this team—not just for passing the test, but for putting in the work between attempt #1 and attempt #2.

That’s what training is all about. Progress, partnership, and becoming a stronger team.

Congratulations, Jordan & Cooper! We can’t wait to see where you go next. 🐾

MYTH BUSTING 🐶🔎: Do dogs feel guilty?

You walk into the room.

The trash is everywhere. A plant has mysteriously exploded across the floor. Your dog won’t look at you. Their ears go back. Their body gets low.

Case closed. They KNOW what they did. 😤

…or do they?

That classic “guilty look” probably isn’t your dog sitting there reflecting on their poor life choices.

What we interpret as guilt — lowered posture, ears back, avoiding eye contact, lip licking, turning away, or trying to appease us — is much more closely associated with a dog responding to our behavior and the situation happening right now.

Dogs are incredibly good at reading us. Your posture, facial expression, tone of voice and movements can all tell your dog that something is wrong.

In fact, research on the “guilty look” found that dogs showed these behaviors more when their owners scolded them, regardless of whether the dog had actually disobeyed.

So when you walk in and say:

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

…and your dog immediately looks like they need an attorney?

They may not be confessing.

They may be saying:

“Oh no. Human is upset. Please don’t be upset with me.” 😬

That doesn’t mean dogs don’t experience complex emotions, or that they can’t learn which behaviors lead to consequences. But the human concept of guilt — I understand that something I did in the past was wrong and I feel remorse about doing it — is a much bigger claim than that adorable guilty face can prove.

And yes…

Even when there is potting soil literally stuck to their face. 😂🪴

Have you ever been CONVINCED your dog knew exactly what they did? Tell us their greatest crime in the comments. 👇