Welcome New Students

NEDTC Steps training is a fun way for you and your dog to learn to communicate and build foundational skills for excellent manners.  We began with the AKC Canine Good Citizen Exam, and then broke each exercise down into their component parts, which are taught in 4 levels. Each level has set skills and goals for you to meet, and you and your dog do so at your own pace. For example, in Step1, skills such as sit, stay, loose leash walking and recall are broken down into small steps, allowing you to practice how your dog thinks and learns, while incrementally increasing duration, time and distraction for a strong solid behavior. In Step 1, we want your dog to walk by your side for half of the ring, by Step 4, your dog is walking around other dogs, through a crowd of people, on a relaxed leash!  

Click here to see the Steps Program Goals for each level.

Click here for an excellent blog post by Patricia McConnell that illustrates how we break down a skill to teach a dog.

All new handler/dog teams will begin in Level 1 (for at least one class*), and will progress to Levels 2-4 at their own pace as they complete a level. This allows each team to increase their goals as their skills grow.  Your team may take as long as needed to complete each level, and our instructors keep track of criteria to determine when you're ready to move ahead.

We use mark/reward training at NEDTC.  Essentially, mark when your dog does something correctly, and then reward them with a food or other treat! Learning new skills requires frequent rewards and frequent reinforcement of the new skill, and as the dog becomes proficient, food rewards will be randomized, or replaced by real-life rewards such as playing with a toy or sniffing a bush.

*Dogs with more advanced training may join at higher levels with permission of instructor.

Have you trained with us before and you’re looking for info?
Please email info@nedtc.org with questions.