Pups To Pooches LLC

I was so glad to find a trainer working with positive reinforcement after several other trainers only offered shock collar training for my dog’s leash issues. With Ann’s help, we were able to make so much progress on Athena’s reactivity on a leash. I appreciate her help in identifying some of the issues contributing to her reactions, likely some fear and some joint pain. With all this new information my dog and I are both able to enjoy our walks more.

Edit: My pup is 7 months now and the sweetest and most gentle puppy without any professional training. He is great around babies and toddlers. Ann was very confident in her assessment that this dog was not to be around children and that I should even return him to the breeder. For me this is not a personal offense but just indicative of how inexperienced she was to make a professional judgment based off of how far off the mark she was and how quickly she came to her judgments. Shortly after meeting with Ann I did find another trainer and he is set to do a board and train with her while we are out of town later this summer, but even several months ago when the other trainer first met our dog, their assessment of him was completely different from Ann’s. —— Consultation with Ann for my puppy was $275. I was looking for a trainer to do ongoing lessons with. Firstly it didn’t seem like she had reviewed my application beforehand, and the application was very extensive and took a bit of time to fill out. Took her a few minutes to pull it up on her phone and seemed like she was reading it on the spot for the first time. Our conversation wasn’t as structured as I expected for $275. Her evaluation of my dog was passive observation of him wandering around the house while we sat at my dining table talking. Her recommendations and observations were also consistently contradictory throughout our 90 minute conversation, I think because instead of actually doing an intentional evaluation of the puppy, she was making drive by comments at every little thing my puppy did during the 90 minutes she was there. When I took the dog out on my lawn for potty breaks - since he’s only 17 weeks he still needs quite a few - she just sat at my table waiting for us to come back, didn’t follow us to observe the dog’s on lead behavior or my handling of him. There was no formal training recommendation or consultation results provided after our conversation: it was a very casual, informal, unstructured meeting. For $50 I wouldn’t have bothered writing a review but for $275 and 90 minutes I expected more than what just seemed like chatting with any other person and hearing their opinions. To contrast, after this experience I did another puppy consultation for $100 that was actually helpful (very hands on and active participation from the trainer, gave me lots of tools and how to correct things and work on specific issues, studied the dog under different situations). Decided to do further training with the other company based on their puppy consult.

We have a one-year old puppy who is very anxious about anything new that enters his world, i.e., our home, yard, etc. We love our puppy so much, but no matter how hard we tried, we were not able to help him become less anxious. Through a Google search, I found Pups to Pooches LLC. Our behaviorist/trainer is Ann Lewis, and I cannot tell you what a difference she has made in our lives. She initially did a 90 minute consultation with us, and she instantly connected with our puppy and our family--I knew that Ann was what we had been searching for. Ann talked to us about what she saw as she observed our puppy, and his interactions with our family and with her. Ann demonstrated games to play to help our puppy be more self confident. She sent us video clips of herself performing these exercises with her own dog, and other dogs that she has worked with who have been able to overcome their fears. She also recommended toys to play with as well. She comes to our home, where our dog is most comfortable, and spends time with us every two weeks, for the time being, and observes our puppy's (and family's) progress. Our puppy has come so far, and we know that we have found someone who can partner with us to help our puppy be his best self. I highly recommend Pups To Pooches LLC!