Karen Deeds: The Pieces to Creating Peace At Home

·42 min·4 clips

Karen Deeds spends up to six days living with clients to solve severe dog behavior problems.

Host Melissa Bro interviews Karen Deeds, a certified dog behavior consultant through the IAABC, on the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast. Deeds shares her background, including moving from Kansas to Texas and now living in Tennessee with her husband, both dog trainers. She describes her two dogs: a Border Collie mix named Dempsey, who was semi-feral, and a Labrador named Stoney. Deeds introduces her immersion program, where she spends three to six days with clients to address serious behavior issues. The conversation focuses on creating harmony in multi-dog households. Deeds emphasizes meeting individual dog needs and using management to prevent conflicts, such as separating resource guarders. She defines settle as a differential reinforcement behavior that teaches dogs an alternative to unwanted actions. Deeds details her settle training method, starting with seeding a mat with food to create a calm association, then generalizing it with cues like hand signals and leash pressure. She explains how settle helps both anxious and impulsive dogs by providing structure. Deeds discusses common multi-dog household problems, including conflicts over food, chew toys, and thresholds. She notes that pain often contributes to sudden aggression between dogs. The episode covers foundational skills like name game, sit, eye contact, and settle for behavior modification. Deeds promotes her upcoming FDSA class, Harmony in the Household, which addresses various in-home conflicts beyond just dog-to-dog issues. She mentions her resource guarding class in April and a webinar on settle training. The episode concludes with Deeds encouraging both beginners and advanced trainers to join her class.

As heard by us

A grounded look at using structure, mat work, and predictable food cues to help dogs settle at home.

Karen Deeds frames peace at home as something dogs can practice, especially when arousal, anxiety, or impulsivity starts making choices for them. Her mat-based routine gives the dog a clear job: go to a place, settle there, and learn that food can predict what comes next.

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Why you'd press play

You want more peace at home when your dog sees another dog or seems to want everything at once.

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