Koda K-9 Academy

Stella, our 5 month old Blue Healer, just returned from 2 weeks of training with Conner and team. All I can say is WOW! I love that she has a "place", walks without running ahead of me, sits, stays and lays down! Today a gentleman came to the house and instead of wanting to jump on him, she listened to commands and sat patiently. We loved getting pictures and videos of her while she was at "School", it truly made a difference for us. I cannot recommend Koda K-9 enough, their love for dogs is evident and they care so much about making sure you pick up your puppy far better than you left her there. Thank you again!

Our 10 month old, yellow lab recently attended the KodaK9 2 week boarding and training program. Since Bo has been back home with us he has shown so many amazing improvements. We are able to finally go on walks with him and he is so much easier for us to redirect. He is still a puppy and has a lot of learning to do, but thanks to the help of Conner, Madison & Austin, they were able to provide us with the appropriate tools to keep up his training. Highly recommend this program, the staff were wonderful and very trustworthy. Madison sent pictures almost daily to keep us updated about how Bo was doing. I cannot say enough good things about them!

To say I am incredibly grateful is truly an understatement. This past year my husband and our two pups have been constantly moving and we noticed our 3 year old pup, Moose, started showing serious signs of aggression. I immediately started to research dog trainers in our area and stumbled upon Koda K9. The first training session was incredibly difficult at first, but by the end of our session we already saw a huge change in his behavior and wanted to continue working with Connor. I keep saying our sessions were equally training us as much as they were Moose. But now I feel so much more confident in myself and in Moose. We have always known he is such an incredible pup and after our experience with Koda K9 I can say he is even more so now.

I boarded my dog for the two week basic training course. He was having the typical issues of an untrained dog: leash pulling, some chewing, separation anxiety, general disobedience. A year later, I regret the decision to take him to this training course. Even more so I regret not asking about and researching the methods used beforehand. Kodak9 uses both punishments and rewards to alter behavior. You communicate with the dog that they are being good through a clicker and they are showing undesirable behavior with a “ch ch” sound. Depending on how they respond to your communication, they get rewarded or punished. All is well, I understand some dogs don’t respond to reward only training. The punishment method is what I have a big issue with. The primary mode of punishment is centered around the gentle leader. By itself, this is a powerful tool that can gradually correct leash pulling if implemented correctly. The gentle leader is basically like a head halter for a horse. It controls the dog’s head and you can use that to control where the dog is looking and whether they’re smelling. It is a highly recommended tool for dog training. However, KodaK9 uses the gentle leader as a punishment tool. The punishment is carried out by keeping slack on the gentle leader and yanking it when the dog does something inappropriate, such as walk in front of you. We weren’t instructed to do a gentle tug, we were instructed to yank hard so he feels it and the leash makes a popping noise. The first time I observed it, I felt terribly sorry for my dog. Looking back now, I should have left immediately, but trusted that was the correct method. Even the manual for the gentle leader states to not tug on it. I am sure your dog’s vet would warn against this as well. I never saw this method in any of the training videos nor was this discussed during the consultation. I’m sure there is a reason for that. Throughout the next year we used the leash popping method. Our dog was no longer pulling on the leash, but he developed anxious behavior. Anything that our dog reacted to that would warrant the leash popping (eg a dog staredown)he became even more reactive to. Of course, he associated the sight of those stimuli with the punishment. We were training him behaviors that he shouldn’t do instead of rewarding him for behaviors that he should do when seeing the stimuli. This snowballed into him being anxious for the punishment, confused, and even more reactive. Now, he reacts to these stimuli and associates them with the punishment. The reaction puts him in a state where all training goes out the window. Walks are much more unpleasant than they ever were and I do blame this form of punishment. Now, maybe KodaK9’s methods are more in depth and cover this situation. However, the debriefing did not and by the time the behavior was bad enough to research the source of it (the gentle leader punishment and not properly training the dog how to respond to these stimuli) our dog developed this reactivity that is incredibly hard to correct. Now we are having to work our way back up to him being comfortable around these stimuli. Our walks now consist of walking around, avoiding close contact with other dogs, and working our way up to training our dog to respond to seeing other dogs by looking at us and rewarding him for it. No more leash popping. Also: Our dog was skinny when the two weeks ended. When we picked him up, we could see the outline of almost every rib. He was not starving , but he certainly looked unhealthy. KodaK9 was not feeding him the dog food we gave b/c there was still plenty left. He had bad diarrhea for the next week. Edit: Looking at the response, all I have to say is please stop using the gentle leader to “correct” behavior. It is bad for the dog and inhumane. Edit2: I’m happy to hear they no longer pop the GL. The leash made a loud snapping noise when THEY demonstrated the correction. We rewarded tons, did what they showed to a t, but less harsh. We texted asking for advice. They said, “be more stern”. No thanks.