After much deliberation, we decided our family needed assistance to manage our German Shepherd/Lab mix. Overall, she is a great dog, but she has certain behaviors that are out of our control. We have trained her through PetSmart for about two years, and she is awesome at doing "tricks" and following certain commands. However, certain triggers caused her to lose focus and become unmanageble. We needed more than dog training. We needed people training. Specifically, our main complatins were that she could not stop barking when guests come to the door. And, even more troubling, she has become quite agitated when we play with our two year old daughter. We were afraid that she would inadvertently hurt our child or one of us.
After 1.5 hours of working with Scott, our relationship with our dog has dramatically changed! He taught us how to lead her through certain stressful situations so she doesn't have to step-in to take control. As a result, within 1 day, barking when someone knocks at the door is eliminated. Even more exciting, very clear boundaries have been drawn with respect to our child and how our dog 'may' interact with her at 'our direction.'
It's been 5 days since we've had Scott help us. In these 5 days, my dog is more relaxed. She plays more. We have more opportunities to praise her. And, our home is much safer now that she follows our lead. What amazing results! Our neighbors are in SHOCK at our quiet dog and they are so grateful that they don't have to deal with her loud barking and encroachment on their space when they come over.
My husband was worried that Scott would recommend removing the dog from our home and he was resistent to having Scott get a close look at our situation. There was NO judgement and it was clear from the start that Scott's intent was to help our dog fit into our life. Scott made some recommendations that we thought might be difficult to implement. For example, he suggested that we don't allow our dog to sleep in our bed. We adopted ALL of his recommendations including giving her a new bed. The changes had IMMEDIATE and widespread impact that we could not have predicted. We are so thankful to have control over our large and very powerful dog for the first time in 4 years.
Scott's been great. He improved the quality of our home life in minutes and I know he could do the same for any family. Good luck with your dog's behavior issues!
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