Frequently Asked Questions - Board & Train
ARE WE THE RIGHT FIT? We're excited to work with individuals, families, and multi dog households who are committed to creating a strong, meaningful bond with their dogs. Whether you’re tackling behavioral challenges or looking to improve your dog's off-leash skills, we’re here to guide you every step of the way. We encourage you to research our training techniques, methods, and tools to ensure you’re 100% comfortable with our approach. Training is a team effort, requiring clear communication, trust, and mutual respect from everyone involved. We take a holistic approach, addressing underlying mindset issues to create lasting solutions, and we need your honesty about any behavioral concerns to develop the best plan for your dog and family. Success depends on the entire family working together, following rules, boundaries, and structure consistently. Remember, training is a lifelong commitment—your dog is always learning from you, even when you’re not actively training.
WHY 4/6/8 WEEKS? CAN’T THIS BE DONE FASTER? Short-term programs often create short-term results. Real behavior change takes time because we’re not just teaching skills, we’re changing patterns and teaching nervous system regulation. The first couple of weeks are about decompressing the dog, adjusting to structure, and building a meaningful relationship, before we even dive into reliable obedience skills. The real transformation happens once this foundation is solid. A longer program allows us to build lasting habits instead of “quick fixes”, expose the dog to plenty real-life situations, and ensure behavior holds under pressure and not only in your living room.
WHAT MAKES YOUR BOARD & TRAIN DIFFERENT? While most programs only focus on teaching commands like sit, stay, and recall, it doesn’t address the root cause of behavior: your dog’s nervous system. Dogs that struggle with reactivity, anxiety, or “not listening” are often not stubborn or disobedient, they’re dysregulated, living in "fight-or-flight" mode. In this program, we focus on lowering baseline stress, teaching the dog how to process pressure instead of reacting, and creating clarity through communication, not just commands or party tricks. A regulated dog doesn’t need to be micromanaged. Functional, reliable off-leash obedience is cherry on top! Your dog lives in our home, and they become part of our daily life and pack. This means real life adventures, not just training sessions; exposure to everyday environments and triggers, a much calmer environment than a training facility, and it allows dogs to learn in context, not just in a controlled bubble. We focus on integration into real life.
WHAT DOES A RELATIONAL, BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO DOG TRAINING MEAN? A relational, bottom-up approach to dog training starts with the dog’s body, nervous system, and emotional state before moving to behavior and learning. Body first: A dog’s nervous system can respond to something in the environment before they have the opportunity to make a thoughtful choice. Changes in breathing, muscle tension, movement, posture, scanning, freezing, pulling, barking, or lunging can all be part of a larger physiological response. Instead of looking only at the behavior we want to stop, we also pay attention to what is happening underneath it. Relational safety: Dogs don’t learn in isolation. Their relationship with the person handling them matters. Clear communication, predictability, guidance, and trust can help create a sense of safety and make regulation easier. Rather than expecting the dog to figure everything out alone, we work through challenges together. Moving upward: As a dog becomes more regulated and their level of arousal becomes manageable, they have greater capacity to process and retain information, respond to guidance, learn new patterns, and make different choices. The goal isn’t for a dog to be perfectly calm before learning—it’s to work within a state where learning is actually possible. This is why my training follows: Connect → Regulate → Educate. Before asking, “How do we stop this behavior?” I want to understand the dog experiencing it. What state are they in? What is the behavior accomplishing for them? What are they communicating? What support do they need from me? And once their nervous system is able to receive information—what do I teach them instead? Because lasting behavior change isn’t only about changing what we can see on the outside. It starts with understanding what is happening behind the behavior. The goal is not to spend your life micromanaging your dog. It’s to build new patterns that become increasingly automatic, so your dog needs less guidance from you over time—and you can spend more of your life together simply living, rather than constantly training.
WHY DO YOU USE E-COLLAR? We use an e-collar as a communication tool—an invisible leash that allows us to effectively guide and communicate with dogs during off-leash adventures. When combined with our balanced training approach, the e-collar helps nervous and anxious dogs gain confidence, enabling them to navigate the world calmly and securely. It also provides a clear and consistent way to reinforce boundaries and expectations, giving dogs the freedom to explore while ensuring their safety and responsiveness. Our goal is to empower dogs and their owners with a reliable and humane tool that fosters trust, strengthens the human-dog bond, and allows for a richer, more enjoyable life together.
IS THERE ANY DOGS YOU DO NOT WORK WITH? Currently, we are not able to take aggression cases (human, dog, food, etc.) or dogs who mean harm to others. We never work with dogs who are ill, injured, in pain, in heat, or have any parasites. We recommend postponing their training until their vet officially clears them.
WHAT IS A MEET & GREET? Successful dog training is mainly about educating and coaching dog owners. We believe that it is crucial for all of us to be on the same page in order to succeed. The Meet & Greet is a great way for us to connect with dog owners in person and get to know their dogs prior to any formal training or commitment. We get to see a glimpse of the big picture behind any behavior issues which helps us create a customized training plan for each dog and their families. We walk owners through the whole training process, talk about any adjustments necessary in order to reach their training goals and proper use of training tools. We also encourage owners to get familiar with training tools such as e-collar by trying them on themselves. :)
WHERE WILL MY DOG STAY DURING BOARD & TRAIN? Every trainee dog lives in Mariann's home. As the owner and head trainer of We Are One K9 Training, Mariann provides a highly personalized, in-home Board & Train experience alongside her three helper dogs who play an important role in many of our training programs. Over the years, her dogs have helped raise countless puppies, supported the rehabilitation of many reactive dogs, and taught valuable social skills that simply can't be replicated through human interaction alone. Because every dog is different, interactions are always carefully supervised and tailored to your dog's individual needs, temperament, and training goals. When appropriate, your dog may learn through structured play, social time, parallel walks, coexisting around other dogs, and observing calm, appropriate behavior from experienced canine role models. When rest is needed, rest is respected. When space is needed, space is provided. And when support is needed, support is available. By limiting our available Board & Train spots, we're able to provide a level of personalized attention, training, and care that many larger facilities simply cannot offer. Our home-based training experience is designed to create a safe, peaceful, and supportive environment where your dog can slow down, learn, grow, and practice new skills while becoming part of our daily life.
CAN I VISIT MY DOG DURING THE BOARD & TRAIN PROGRAM? Short answer: no. Here is why: adjusting to a new environment is already stressful enough for most dogs despite our best effort to make this transition as smooth and fun for the dog as possible. They're in an entirely new environment, around new people, dogs, smells, sounds, etc. After the initial transition, this new environment becomes the least stressful place for them where they are finally able to focus on training and they start making progress. Every visitation would start this process over, and putting a tremendous amount of unnecessary stress on the dog. For the best training results, we recommend people wait until their hands-on training session when their dog returns home, and follow their dog's journey through our social media pUpdates.
WILL I BE INVOLVED? Yes! Your dog's success is dependent on your understanding of the training and ability to maintain it. You will receive weekly videos of your pup learning and putting their newly learned skills into practice as well as hands-on training session(s) at the end of the training program. Follow-up sessions and lifetime support are available in-person and/or via video chat.
HOW CAN I GET STARTED? Get started by clicking the "Get Started" button below and completing the contact form. We personally review every application. If we believe our signature Board & Train program may be a good fit for your goals and situation, we'll reach out via text within 48 hours to schedule a complimentary evaluation call.