Client Reviews and Testimonials

Appears to be the best training. My dog responded immediately to Kendra, actually I did, too. Permalink

Katherine Simkins is an outstanding dog trainer. We contacted Bark Busters to help deal with aggressive behavior from one of our two Schipperke's towards other people in the house, including the owner. She taught us how to respond to our dogs in a positive yet firm manner, without any physical threats or intimidation. She made us feel empowered to become the "pack leaders" and helped us understand why this role was of such importance for canines in any household. Katherine was very patient and thoroughly explained her techniques. She followed this by demonstrating the activity and then had us each practice it while she observed. Katherine has come to our home twice within a month which reinforced whether we were performing the exercises correctly. Our dogs have responded very well to this training. There is certainly a learning curve, but with consistency, our dogs behaviors have dramatically improved. They are listening better, are less aggressive, and have been much more focused since the initiation of this training with Katherine. Our dogs are 9 years old and we sincerely believe that you can teach old dogs new tricks. We look forward to working with Katherine over the next year and progressing in this training system to make our home a happy and safe environment for us, the dogs, and all visitors. Permalink

Mike is great! I was having so much trouble traveling with my puppy in the car. He refused to sit anywhere except on my lap, which became dangerous and expensive as I was forced to leave him in overnight daycare anytime I traveled on the weekend. Upon arrival Mike quickly assesses the situation and relationship I had with my dog and explained to me that the reason for him not being able to ride patiently in the backseat of the car rooted from other issues that needed to be corrected first. By the end of 1 hour spent with Mike, my pup can now ride in the backseat with no issues at all! Completely amazed that this was done with absolutely no bribery and/or harm! Permalink

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! Permalink

Dick repeated and reinforced the basic techniques without being condescending. I liked that there were NO treats required for rewards. Dick is a very dynamic speaker. Dick followed up with a phone call and took his time to re-emphasize important aspects. Permalink

Scheduled us the next day (emergent need) and even skipped her lunch to work with us! Was respectful of our time. She was great with the dog! Permalink

Michael spent an hour with our dog Pudge a 6 yr old Chocolate Lab that we rescued and changed his behavior immediately. Pudge has been changed dog ever since. He is truly a dog whisperer. I would recommend him to anyone.... Permalink

Working with Robin as our trainer was an incredible experience. I had worked with a previous trainer, and the energy and personality did not mesh well at all. As soon as Robin walked through the door, she commanded authority with our dogs. They immediately responded, almost like a magic trick. Her training techniques were not only immediately effective, they have lasted after only one session. Robins energy, diction, and practice were professional, and friendly. She was able to provide the tools we needed to succeed as dog owners. She was able to patiently teach us in a way that was never hurried or frustrating. I was shocked at how quickly our dogs picked up on these training, non violent, techniques. Anyone with a dog should use these training tools. We had some issues with the dogs fighting, and some dominance issues, and she was able to provide ease to our worries with some simple rules and tools to break up a fight and prevent them from even beginning. I plan on using Robin many more times in the future. She was amazing! Permalink

What a change we saw just in the first session! I couldn't believe it! Apollo is a HUGE baby, at 7 months he's already over 100 pounds and nothing we had tried was working. After the first session working on basic commands like "sit" and "stay" he caught right on, and only with using verbal commands and body language. We worked on his barking when people come to the door and he immediately took to the training, a complete 180. Robin was great, and walked us through everything we needed to do. I really like the training method used by Bark Busters because it's more "pack oriented" in a sense. There's no treats needed and no aggression associated with it. Just a pecking order, how a dog's natural instinct will tell him where he stands in a pack environment based on the interactions of his other pack mates. Can't wait to see where he is in a few months from now, I know it will be great for him and for us! Permalink

Mary has been extremely helpful. We adopted a dog about a year old and he is still a puppy in many ways. With both my husband & i working we felt we needed some expert guidance. Mary is always very professional and had a lot of good advice and tips for us. She is always very patient and we look forward to her visits. We never had a trainer before with our other dogs....but we were younger then. I would not hesitate to recommend Bark Busters or Mary for anyone thinking about a dog trainer. Permalink