Manners & Obedience

What Foundation Camp Did for Wooffles

Before camp: Recall failures, fence-line fixation, and chasing the smaller dog at home.

Breed: Belgian Malinois
Age at intake: 11 months
Campus: Scottsdale
Program: Foundation Camp
Length of stay: Two weeks

Still from Wooffles's first journey episode

Before

Where Wooffles Started

Recall failures, fence-line fixation, and chasing the smaller dog at home

Wooffles came to Partners Dogs as an 11-month-old Belgian Malinois who could take her family up to two hours to catch if she got loose on their three-acre lot. She ran to the fence line toward the neighbors' dog and chased the smaller dogs she lived with at home. Trainer Cal opened by building relationship and confidence rather than pushing obedience right away, since early sessions showed her overstimulated and declining treats altogether.

He worked with voice and physical praise instead of food until she found motivation in play and, later, a specific treat that finally got her engaged. From there training moved into leash-pressure work, door and threshold manners, and command review, building toward the e-collar and off-leash work her family's acreage called for. By the second week Wooffles was holding eye contact for the first time, a shift from the near-total shutdown of her first days at camp.

The program

Wooffles's Foundation Camp

Wooffles spent two weeks at Foundation Camp working through recall failures and pulling on her family's three-acre property. The team started with relationship and engagement before adding pressure, since early sessions showed her overstimulated and uninterested in food. Once she found motivation in play and a specific treat, training moved into leash manners, threshold discipline, and command work, building toward the e-collar and off-leash reliability her family's acreage required.

Episode by episode

Watch Wooffles's Journey

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

See every Training Journey

After

Where Wooffles Ended Up

15Days in camp

3Episodes filmed

e-collar, martingaleEquipment at go-home

By transition day, Wooffles was engaging consistently, holding eye contact, and calm enough for a supervised reintroduction to her owner. Cal had expected to recommend a third week, and at the two-week mark he, Charlyn, and the team agreed together that she was ready to go home. On camera, Charlyn said she was seeing a big improvement over how Wooffles had been before camp. She went home wearing the e-collar at low, mostly unused pressure, with a plan to build toward off-leash reliability on the family's property.

At the in-home follow-up a week later, Cal worked her through basic obedience to redirect her fixation on the household's smaller dogs, framing it as prey drive rather than aggression, and showed her owner how a change in handler and pressure shifted her focus.

Published July 16, 2024

“She's a Belgian mal and she was so totally out of control that I couldn't do anything with her hardly, and I brought her in here and I see such a big improvement in two weeks. I'm really pleased, very happy about that.”

Charlyn, Wooffles's Owner

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