Puppy Foundations

What Foundation Camp Did for Callie

Before camp: A puppy who mobbed every visitor and would not come back on a walk.

Breed: Pitbull X
Program: Foundation Camp
Length of stay: Two weeks
Trainer: Megan Fiedler

Before

Where Callie Started

A puppy who mobbed every visitor and would not come back on a walk

Callie is a curious, energetic pitbull mix puppy, and her family had three specific things they were working through at home.

Visitors got mobbed at the door. Recall fell apart at the desert wash near their house. And she was still learning how to read other dogs and interact appropriately.

Normal puppy problems, all three. Normal does not mean they fix themselves.

The program

Callie's Foundation Camp

Callie came in for a two week stay in Foundation Camp. The first work was understanding why each behavior was happening and setting expectations that were realistic for a puppy, then building the plan from there.

No shortcuts were used, because there are none at this age. Clear communication, consistency, and puppy foundations that hold up later.

Leash reactivity turned up late in the stay, so it was worked in the Teaching stage: staying engaged with her handler instead of tensing at a trigger going past. First exposure, not a finished skill, and her family was told exactly that.

Episode by episode

Watch Callie's Journey

Filmed during the stay, in order. Nothing here is staged after the fact.

See every Training Journey

After

Where Callie Ended Up

Callie went home greeting people politely, coming back reliably even in distracting places, and reading other dogs better than she had. On leash she still locks onto a dog in the distance now and then, and her family can pull her attention back without help, which is the honest version of where a puppy lands after two weeks.

They then took it into the real world: the front door, the desert wash, and play with other dogs, which is where puppy training either holds or does not.

Published March 23, 2026

The trainer