Zen Dog's Vancouver Adult Dog Training

Your adult dog is evolving. As you share your life together new things emerge: goals and needs arise that you may want to address, revisit or expand.You may have never thought of what a dog training class can offer until now. Much like our own personal journey, our adult dog is ever-changing and developing. From how we see it at Zen Dog Canine Training, learning never really ends!

Why take dog training classes?

Where you are at now is why you got that puppy, or took that rescue dog home. You have envisioned sharing your life with your best companion on mountain hikes or sidewalk strolls through the Vancouver neighborhood, stopping for coffee or throwing a ball down at the beach. You want those polite social interactions, those loose leash walks and the off-leash freedom to roam.

Dog training classes can be a great part of that journey you take with your dog. Our adult dog services can help you develop as a team, providing education so that you can be your best self for your best dog. That process begins with an understanding and creating clear and achievable goals.You may have some dog behaviours you want to change. Or you may simply want to have more fun with your dog, creating a stronger relationship you will cherish.

Whatever your goals we want to share in that evolution with you!

For the Vancouver area, we offer two levels of obedience group courses, and a monthly social walking club that puts dogs and their people in touch.

Vancouver Dog Training Classes: Level One

Our Level One Life Skills course is our premier level one obedience course, incorporating both game-based and obedience-oriented exercises into the skills you will teach your dog, all using positive reinforcement.

This six week course begins with a Zoom class and then we move to four instructional group lessons outdoors so we have plenty of room to work on big picture stuff. It is how dogs learn best and where they need to use those life skills most. Our sixth class is a field trip! We meet in a fun urban area, work on all of our skills in a practical setting so you can see how the training applies to real world stuff!

In Life Skills we cover management and its importance in dog behaviour; nutrition and wellness for mental and physical health; kind leadership practices so the human steers the ship; reinforcement strategies using markers for clarity and precision; toy play for relationship building; engagement games for distractions; settling exercises for both inside and out; responsible leash walking concepts; and recall games. 

Vancouver Dog Training Classes: Level Two

This is the class we are most proud of! Our Skills and Drills class is devoted to our students who have put in the hours of hard work building a solid foundation in their dog and now want to flex their skills through proofing exercises to generalize those learned behaviors and bring them into the fluency and maintenance phase of training.

Our Skills and Drills Power Hour is fun and dynamic; designed to strengthen the human/dog bond, and improve handler knowledge and dog skills. You and your dog will come home tired!

We work on toy play, duration in stationary behaviours, leash skills, recalls, fancy obedience exercises and lots of distractions from fellow participants. We show you how fun training your dog can truly be and, as with many of our long-time clients, you might never want to leave!

Vancouver Sunday Morning Dog Walking Club

Zen Dog Canine Training offers a fun social outing for dogs and their people through our monthly Sunday Morning Walking Club. These city walks provide participating dogs and their people with a safe and structured social experience through on-leash parallel walks. This is the chance to take a break from training, get out together as a group and socialize, both human and dog.Our one-hour group walks meet once a month, weather permitting, in the Vancouver area. For each walk we choose a fun, dog-friendly location that makes for a good trek.

Benefits of Dog Classes

Dogs love learning. They love the opportunity to use their breed-specific genetics to gain reinforcement and praise; the sense of fitting in and being understood. Dogs are, in part, a product of our knowledge and how we guide them through their world. Through education, the greater your dog’s skill set, the more expansive their world becomes. And the more enrichment your dog will enjoy.

We want you to enjoy the full potential of your dog by making learning both constructive and fun.