Dog's Best Friend

To start off with, unlike a lot of the reviews I have read or other customers I met, my dog Bacon (everybody loves Bacon), does not have any behavioral issues such as shyness or aggression. He is a great dog, just too friendly and hyper. I was giving him too much freedom and when he finally got side swiped by a car I decided he needed training. Dog's Best Friend did a wonderful job and I was able to work with both Samantha and Tristan over the summer and fall. I now have far more trust and control over Bacon. All of my friends and family can see the difference. I definitely recommend.

***EDIT: The owners response to me? Wow. This place is just filled with liars I guess. My dog is NOT reactive aggressive. He is reactive and wants to play with other dogs and pulls and barks to get to them. He has never once been aggressive until Samantha's dog was in pain and he tried to protect the puppy. I never once told Samantha (who Chas said is only 19 years old) that he is aggressive. I made it very clear to her that he IS NOT. Found a behaviorist who also said that Dog's Best Friend is awful. Just ask around (not just read reviews) before you go here and I guarantee you will not hear nice things. *** What an awful experience I've had with this place. I would like to start out by saying we worked with Samantha, who had I known is only a teenager I never would have paid almost $500 dollars for a kid to train my dog (he is reactive towards other dogs, we were trying to stop his excessive barking). I thought we would be getting the 30 years of experience from the owner. I did not realize his kid would be training us instead. The great reviews of this place all seem to come from Chas and the poor reviews all come from his children. I wish Chas had worked with us. I felt a bit mislead. Samantha is very rude and cold. At the end of each session, she would stand at the door with it open before we could even get our coats on to make sure we left. When we tried asking questions about what we worked on at the end of a session, she would say "your time is up". Whenever I would ask questions about how or why to do something, her answer would typically be "I've been doing this since I was 6 years old" instead of actually explaining why that method works or why they do it this way. Whenever I would ask why my dog does a specific 'bad' behavior, she would tell me it is my fault. I have only had my dog for a few months and he has a bad background, but his bad behavior is all my fault because I'm not training him properly? Doing the best I can with what she gave me to work on. But she would constantly tell me I was doing a good job with him. How can it be my fault if I'm doing the right thing?? There are no structured lessons. Everything is kind of put on the owners of what we want to teach the dog and how we want to train him. I have no idea how to train a dog or what the best technique is. That is why I PAID a lot of money for a trainer to teach me what to do and how to do it. I explained what the problem was during the consultation and assumed we would have structured lessons based around my dog's issues. But she did not seem to have any sort of plan at all. She just sort of winged it. However, the main reason I would tell anyone to NOT go here is because she hurt her own dog during a session. She brought her puppy out, who did not do what she wanted quick enough so she body slammed her dog to the ground. The poor pup was yelping and crying out in pain to the point where my dog got extremely aggressive (he has never been aggressive before) and tried to go after Samantha to protect the puppy. Even my 1 yr. old dog could see that she was hurting her puppy. The noises were so heartbreaking to hear. What kind of trainer forces their own dog to the ground to the point where they are in serious pain? What would have happened if I ever left my dog alone with her? Thankfully I never did. DO NOT GO TO THIS PLACE! I was even warned by another trainer I had worked with before starting with Samantha that they abuse dogs here. I should have listened!!

Short review: Dog's Best Friend is a life saver! We were given the tools we needed for our high energy, fear aggressive Maddie. We recommend Dog's Best Friend to everyone! Long story: We adopted Maddie at eight weeks. From the get go she was a highly energetic, dominant puppy. Her playful personality easily (& immediately) transitioned into aggression. To top it off she had scarey situations (getting run over by a bike, getting zapped by an electric fence) that made her prone to fear biting. Our own aggressive training to mitigate her negative behavior only made things worse. Family members and friends were terrified of Maddie. She bit people and we worried that we would have to put her down someday because she would attack somebody. Dog's Best Friend trained us to train her, to utilize simple, simple, simple techniques to bring out the best in our dog. We started out with private classes, some that I attended alone, some my husband attended, some we both attended, and then moved onto group classes. I thought hour long classes would drag on but the time flew by - Dog's Best Friend made the classes fun & enjoyable! Now for the first time we had friends over and Maddie did not spend the time in her crate; she engaged with our friends and even gave them kisses! Our family members are astounded by the change in Maddie's behavior as well. It takes a lot of diligent work! We utilized Dog's Best Friend techniques (& will continue to do so) and we are impressed with how far she's come. Thank you Dog's Best Friend, we couldn't have done it without you!