Monthly Musings With Matt: June 2025

Social media often portrays dog training as simple and easy.  That is #fakenews, and I would like to make a request to the cancel culture vultures to end that narrative immediately.  The truth most dog trainers won’t tell you on their social media pages is that dog training is seldom easy, and it absolutely is not effortless. The reality is this: dog training is hard work. It is monotonous at times and fully reliant on consistency and patience (lots and lots of patience). However, when you are finally able to extinguish a dog’s reactivity and resource guarding habits, enabling them to experience freedom and adventure again, that is when dog training becomes truly rewarding. 

While these writings will be a place for dog highlights and hyping them up, it will also be a place to talk about the stuff that won’t always make the cut on a social media reel from the past month. This is the real reel (in written form), and it will feature the good, the bad, the stubborn and the messy parts of dog training that are usually not talked (or tik-tok-ed) about. 

The month of June, the kennel was filled with a plethora of personality, energy and more than a few pups with a streak of spunk, sass, and stubbornness.  It has been a busy time for Highland Canine Wilkesboro, but knowing these dogs are going to live a more wholesome and happier life than their family (and our furry friends) knew possible, makes the long days and the stubborn sessions even more worthwhile.  The six-week Board and Train (on and off-leash bootcamp) program had unique (and impressive) dogs who learned and accomplished so much during their time at Highland Canine! 

Like these dogs, our social media pages were a work in progress the last month, so they may not have been featured. Just in case they didn’t get the opportunity to be introduced and acknowledged, we want to shine a spotlight on them here!