Welcome to our community!  Here are some tips on how to get the most use out of this website.

Alert: Be sure to check out our new LIVE CLASSROOM located in the slide out menu.

1.The first thing that is always recommended is to register and build a profile for yourself and for each of your dogs that you own (you can keep records on as many dogs as you like).  This will make it easier for anyone that is helping you to get a better idea of your own experience and the background of your dogs.  You can also put together photo albums here!  This can save a helping member lots of time with gathering a history about your dogs' personality types and your individual goals.  If you will be helping others, this will also help others know what you have accomplished and how you can help.

2. Read through the "Self Help" section!  This will not be enough for most people to reach all their goals, but it has a LOT of important information that will get you started on troubleshooting your problems and/or just getting on the right track for a training plan.  If you do not read this section, it will likely be asked of you by a member or trainer that is helping to read it.  It helps give us all a common compass to troubleshoot with.

3. Go to the knowledge base to do further research.  Understanding your dog, your problems, and your goals are VERY important steps for success.  We will be adding more info all the time for further reference.

4. Check the forums to see if anyone has had similar questions as yours in the past.  Fortunately, dogs and people do the same things that cause the same problems.  Therefore, you will often find plans and solutions that will also apply to your situation.

5. Start a training journal for your dog.  If you still do not know where to start, silicate help in the forums.  The forums will always be the best way to have your message viewed by all the members.  Most general questions or thoughts that you would like feedback on are always best put in the forums.  Information here, is always front and center on the site.  Your training journals will not be as visible to all members, so remember to silicate feedback and help if you want someone to review your journals on the forums.

6. Make friends!! If you see members that have similar posts and interests be sure to "friend request" them from their profile pages.  Once you are "friends" it is easy to use the live chat function (aka "bark").  You can make yourself visible to friends when online and you can invite as many friends as you like into your bark box.  You can also chat with multiple friends at the same time in separate private bark boxes.

7.  If you are feeling desperate for immediate assistance you can type a message in the "howl" section of the bark box.  These chat messages will be seen by everyone who happens to be online even if you are not friends.  This chat box also will keep a history of the dialogue for everyone to see after you log out.  Everyone can write in howl at the same time.

8.  The best way to learn how to train and help people with their dogs is to first learn how to do it, then actually apply it to your own dogs.  After, it is good to HELP others that you think can use it.  Please don't be shy and chime in when people are looking for help.  There is an area on everyone's profile where other users can submit testimonials if you have helped them in any way.  If someone helps you, please submit a testimonial to thank them.

9.  You can create and join groups.  You can create groups for many different reasons on this site.  You can create for people with common interests, training clubs, or any other reason.  You can make these open or private.  Within the groups you can manage your own private forums, create events on a calendar, send mass messages to everyone in the group, and more.

Tips:

• You can copy and paste the page address of any youtube video in your journals, dog profiles, and forum posts.  It will embed automatically.  This is a great way to show the progress of what you are doing with your dogs.
• You can drag the sides of the bark boxes to make them bigger when chatting.
• If you come across a bug on the sites functioning, write it in the website help forums.  This is the quickest way for it to be brought to the attention of the admin, moderators, and IT department.

If you have any suggestions for the site please let us know!