DeMott has begun obedience training for the public and her work with an individual dog may take a month or more.

“I’ll take a dog home with me or go to the dog for about a month for training, but often the time spent training dogs to obey does vary with different breeds,” she said.

“For instance, a herding dog nips at the animals it’s herding. That’s how it gets them to move and that trait is in its lineage. But if a herding dog is a pet, then nipping at people is unacceptable. So you have to train that behavior out of the dog.”

“When I work with a dog,” DeMott said, “I like to use attrition training. By that I mean that I’ll show a dog something I want him to learn. Then I’ll show him again, and again, and again before I put harder pressure on him to learn that thing.”

DeMott said that some dogs, because of their breeding, just take longer than others. Some, particularly alpha male dogs, may take much longer than a month and some just can’t be helped.

“That’s why I say you have to get into their heads. Dogs don’t think the way people think,” she said.

DeMott, too, has learned a lot. Not just about training dogs, but about herself.

“I’ve found that from training dogs I’ve become more confident with myself,” she said.