Beyond the Dog, LLC

I am so happy I chose Beyond the Dog when I was searching for a trainer for Chewie and his separation anxiety. After speaking with Kristyn, she recommended the all inclusive training which is 22 in home lessons. I also have another dog, Miley, who was beginning to show signs of anxiety as well. She was quick to suggest that we should include Miley into training. Shyenne was chosen as our trainer and I’m so thankful for her! She was always very responsive and had an answer for any questions when I’d reach out. Chewie and Miley loved their training sessions with her. I wish I had decided to put them through training long ago with Beyond the Dog. I truly appreciated that Shyenne made sure I was comfortable with the plans and how great she was with communication throughout everything. Thank you so much for your time and assistance, Shyenne! I will definitely recommend BTD to friends and family!

We absolutely love Lindsey!! She has done an amazing job enabling us and our 14-week-old (now 5 months old) German Shepherd, Astro to succeed. We take Astro everywhere, he comes to work with us every day, to restaurants, shopping, parks, etc. and people always comment on how well behaved and socialized he is. We just had 18 guests for Thanksgiving and Astro was unbelievably calm and well-behaved in a houseful of people with lots of stimulation. Lindsey is so sweet and patient with Astro (and us too!) We highly recommend Beyond the Dog and Lindsey!

We just finished a four week training program with Nohelle for our beagle’s reactivity to other dogs and squirrels while on leash. We got our dog at the age of four, and she’s not particularly food motivated, but Nohelle gave us strategies to work with when our dog wouldn’t take food (praise and play). For the first two weeks, she focused on pairing, where we gave our dog treats or lots of praise when she saw another dog to create positive associations. The progress was slow at first, but she really turned a corner by the end of the second week and only barked occasionally. Nohelle introduced a citronella collar in the third week as a correction for barking. Although our pup was fearful of the collar at the beginning, Nohelle helped us work through that, addressed our concerns, and encouraged us to keep using treats and praise to prevent outbursts so we won’t have to spray our dog. Nohelle was also very sweet and gave us constructive feedback on our handling skills without ever getting frustrated if we made the same mistakes multiple times. And she taught us a lot about reading our dog’s body language to better predict her reactions to her surroundings. We had to put in a lot of effort on our own outside of the sessions with Nohelle to keep our dog on the right track. And now that we’re done with the training, we still have work to do to reinforce the progress she has made during this time. But I finally feel like I have the techniques I need to continue working on my dog’s reactivity and make her progress last long-term. Thank you so much Nohelle and Beyond the Dog!

We worked with Ben from Beyond the Dog. We did the all inclusive treatment program for our dog, Heathcliff, in addition to 11 maintenance sessions. Ben is exceptionally professional and skilled with dogs, and VERY knowledgeable about dog behavior (and I imagine other animal behavior too since he has worked in the Zoo!). He is an animal lover, kind, gentle, attentive, combined with a ton of expertise and I felt that we were in great hands. I was super anxious before we started just given how much training we had previously done and Ben was kind enough to offer to call me before we started, and his competence was clear from there on out. He also has a great way with pet parents and made me feel very reassured throughout. Before Beyond the Dog, we were at wits end. Walking Heathcliff was enough to bring me to tears and a state of panic. It was mortifying and embarrassing when he would lunge and bark, and we feeling completely hopeless that anything would help, since we had already done 2 courses of other types of training. Still, we gave Beyond the Dog a go, and I am so glad we did. Their approach is based on science and empirical research which is so important and not something I looked into for our previous training. We did the all-inclusive program in June '23 with the goal of addressing leash reactivity. After the all inclusive program, Heathcliff was 75% there and was doing better than he EVER has for leash reactivity after any training we've ever done (and we've done a lot!). His reactivity was quite bad and hard to break, and he started to show more interest in other dogs, and the barking and lunging reduced significantly. We recently added 6 additional maintenance sessions in Nov of '23 because we had initially decided to limit negative consequences for reactivity, but Heathcliff needed a little more help to get that extra 25% of the way. Since then, we been able to attain that extra 25% and also work on training Heathcliff to walk with a stroller as I am pregnant with our first baby. We did an additional 5 sessions in October to work on the issue of anxiety and reactivity related to guests, and we had guests come over while Ben was at our house for training. That in-home piece is really key for us. Heathcliff is now doing excellent and I am so grateful to Ben and Beyond the Dog. Training is pricey but worth paying for rather than paying for other training programs that are not effective! I would encourage anyone who is on the fence to go for it, you will not regret it. The only downside is the scheduling, as we sometimes learned last minute of when sessions would be scheduled which made scheduling work meetings tricky. Thank you Beyond the Dog and Ben! <3 We are so grateful for your help. Amanda, Daniel, Heathcliff, and Atticus

My husband and I had a wonderful experience with Beyond the Dog. We are so grateful for our trainer Abby! We were expecting our first baby in September and knew that we needed training for our two 7+ year old dogs. Both our dogs did not listen very well and barked at EVERYTHING, especially any activity going on in our front and back yards. We started training with Abby in early September and continued after our baby was born, she was very flexible with our crazy schedule! Now our dogs are MUCH more calm and not as reactive to activities going on in our yards. They are also better behaved with our guests. Of course they still bark sometimes, but for the majority of the time they can handle seeing people in our yards. We are having construction done in our back patio, and the dogs calmly walk by our back door without barking. Before training, they both would have lost their minds and barked uncontrollably/lunged at our back door. We are so thankful for Abby and highly recommend her!