Posted on Yelp:
We have two small terriers, ages 7 and 9, and we reached a breaking point after a litany of poor behaviors over time had piled up. I didn't realize how many there were until I started making a list in preparation for meeting and selecting a trainer.
The first trainer we met with did not seem at all interested in fostering our connection with the dogs while also teaching proper behavior. Her answer to everything was bitter apple spray. In fact she sprayed our dogs immediately upon entering our home the first time, without our approval. Aside from whether we were ok with this method or not, what was more frustrating was that just a week prior one of them had an abscessed tooth extracted! That can't have felt good to him. We wanted to teach our dogs to be better behaved but we also want to respect that they are dogs and we have to learn how to communicate with them properly and let them, at the end of the day, be dogs. Not just little robots that are too afraid to do anything. We couldn't wait for her to leave and knew, without hesitation, that she would not be helping us train our dogs.
About an hour after the interview with the first trainer, Susan arrived. Within minutes I breathed a sigh of relief and my fiance and I immediately agreed upon her leaving that she was the one for us. You could tell with the way she interacted with the dogs, and how she talked with us about the dogs, that she was very interested in respecting that they are dogs and helping us figure out how to connect with them on their level to obtain the behaviors we needed for a more peaceful home and the ability to go out with them in public without worrying about their behavior.
We trained with her for about 6 months. We started first at once a week and then every couple weeks and then even longer stretches. We had some deeply embedded issues and VERY quirky pups. The usual prescription didn't always work. What is great about Susan is she has the foundation training tricks down that pretty much every trainer knows, but she is also good at recognizing when something standard isn't working for your pup. Tucker, especially, was a tough nut. He didn't always respond to the first or even second thing we tried, but she would study him and try different things and figure out something that would work.
I am happy to say that now my little jumping bean has learned to control his energy and sit when I come home instead of jumping all over me. He has stopped immediately lunging toward the door of our neighbors across the hall because their dog starts barking the second we come out. He has learned to go into his kennel, which he was previously deathly afraid of, on his own and cuddle up. His reaction on leash continuously improves. I used to not even be able to re-direct his attention with a treat. Now I can re-direct his attention and in some cases I don't even need to. Over time, I know he will be able to walk past other dogs without reacting. And my other little pup, the super shy guy, is learning to explore the world with some techniques she taught us. He now gets excited to go out and explore instead of being afraid of everything in sight. I can't recommend Susan highly enough. As I continue to be consistent with the core training techniques we used, I continue to see improvement in areas I wasn't even expecting.
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