Day training in Murfreesboro
How It Works
The Foundation Program is our most complete training experience. It's built in three steps, each one designed to move your dog forward and bring you along with it.
Day Train with our trainers
Drop your dog off with our trainer in the morning. Throughout the day, our trainers build a strong foundation by teaching your dog the fundamentals, with real-world distractions built in.
Turnover lesson
At the end of the day, you'll get hands-on instruction from your trainer in a go-home lesson. We walk you through everything your dog learned, have you take the lead, and teach you how to recreate the same communication your dog learned during the day with our trainers.
Private lessons
After the Day Train, your trainer coaches you one-on-one. These lessons bridge the gap between what your dog knows and what you know. They put you in the driver's seat as your dog's leader, with your trainer right beside you, guiding you and showing you the ropes until leading your dog feels natural. Once you've built that foundation, you can continue practicing and strengthening your dog's skills through group classes, where you can work around other dogs and people in a more social environment. You'll also have access to virtual support for guidance and answers to questions as you continue your training journey.
During the day
Day Train With Us
During the day, our trainers teach your dog through touch, movement, and body language, the way dogs naturally communicate.
We don't wait for a dog to make a mistake and then correct it. Instead, we make the answer clear from the very start, going out of our way to help your dog understand what we're asking the first time. If it doesn't click right away, we adjust how we communicate with that individual dog until it understands what we're asking. All of this happens with real-world distractions built in throughout the day, including new people, other dogs, sounds, and changing environments, so the skills hold up outside a quiet room.
Above all, we focus on the fundamentals. Everything we do starts with making your dog aware of us, because we can't solve a problem if the dog isn't aware of us in the first place. That's why we don't treat behavior problems as separate projects. Jumping, leash pulling, and other issues are resolved through the same fundamentals we begin teaching on day one.
We also don't send you home with homework to practice for set periods of time. Our philosophy is simple: train as you live. Success comes from using the fundamentals we teach throughout your normal, everyday life.
The turnover lesson is where your part begins, and it's one of the most important moments of the whole program. Come in ready to learn, and bring your questions. Your trainer will show you exactly what your dog worked on that day, and coach you through it hands-on, so you can replicate what we accomplished during the day and then expand on it at home. The owners who show up engaged and curious see the fastest progress, because their dog starts hearing the same clear language from them that it heard from us.
One-on-one coaching
Private Lessons With Your Trainer
The private lessons are what make the program so effective. A dog is only as consistent as the person guiding it.
In your lessons, we teach you to give clear direction through your timing, your posture, and your movement, so your dog never has to guess what you're asking. This is where clarity really comes in for you as the owner. You'll begin to see how different inputs from you lead to different results from your dog, and that a dog who seems “stubborn” or “knows better” often simply has no idea what's being asked of it.
After each lesson, your trainer will give you a few things to work on in your everyday life until your next lesson, then check your progress and move you forward from there.
Is it the right fit?
Who It's For
The Foundation Program is the cornerstone of what we do at Talking Tails, and it's a great fit for most dogs and most families. It works so well because it teaches your dog and you at the same time: your dog learns with our trainers during the day, and you learn right alongside it through the turnover and private lessons.
Whether you work during the day, have a dog with energy to burn, or simply want a professional to build the foundation while you learn to lead, this program is built for you. It works for young dogs starting fresh and older dogs who picked up habits along the way.
The one exception is dogs with an extensive bite history. For those dogs, we start with private lessons only, so you and your trainer can work together one-on-one from the very beginning.