Instinct Canine Holistic Behavioral Training

In December 2023 , I adopted a three month old female rottweiler. We call her Stella. She quickly became comfortable in our home revealing her very puppy-like behavior. While it was cute when Stella was 10 lbs., as she quickly got bigger, we knew that she couldn’t continue to behave like our 11 lbs. poodle Pepper and to a lesser extent our beagle Nugget, whose playfulness is much more tolerable. As such, we had to seek out help and sought advice from our veterinarian, She advised us to seek out a professional dog trainer and recommended that we contact Ben Gagne, trainer and owner of Instinct Canine Holistic Behavioral Training. In fact, she had her own dog trained by Ben. We took her advice and met with Ben. Immediately we could see how passionate Ben was about his work and were amazed at the connection he made with Stella right off the bat. We were so impressed that we signed Stella up for a month of in-home training once a week. During that time, we could see how well Ben communicated with Stella and how much her behavior was improving that we decided to increase her training. We opted for 5-day a week training sessions, which includes training at Ben’s facility and exposure field trips to various locations Monday through Thursday and at-home training on Friday. It is on Fridays when Ben works with both Stella and us so that we learn the correct way to work with her and are able to continue training over the weekend. Also, because her training is away from home, we receive pictures and videos of Stella from Ben throughout the day, which we love, enabling us to see Stella learning and in action. Stella, who is now 65 lbs. and still growing, has shown a dramatic improvement in her puppy-like behaviors, even in our multi-pet home, which can be somewhat unstructured and hectic at times, all thanks to Ben. Overall, we cannot speak more highly of Ben and his abilities, and highly recommend him to anyone in need of an expert trainer. Rating: A+

We have been working with Ben and his team for about four months. We have two young German shepherds and though we tried they needed professional training. We have gone from the dogs pulling us everywhere when on their leads to us being able to walk them off leads. They are now well behaved in the house and obey our commands. Ben has been great at training the dogs but also training my wife and I which we have learned is just as important. We both trust and like Ben very much and recommend him whole heartedly. He is a great guy too!

I have not had a good experience with Ben. Unfortunately, he never showed up to our appointment. I text and called him and received a call 2 hours afterwards explaining he had mixed up the dates. I rescheduled again bc I understand there can be a mix up with times or dates. He never showed up for the second appointment. I texted him twice and never heard bank from him. I would have rather had him be honest and say he couldn’t make the appointments then waste my time.