Unleash Fido

Dakota and Unleash Fido turned our pups into new dogs! Our two large dogs (7 year old lab mix and 2 year old doodle) came in with their own issues and anxiety triggers, which included barking at the sight of other dogs on walks, pulling on leash, not listening and being embarrassingly uncontrollable. I’ll never forget our intake interview when my dogs were barking and so I’ll behaved that I was worried they were a lost cause. Fast forward through a few weeks with Dakota, and they came home staying on place, heeling, and ignoring other dogs on walks! Best of all, Dakota was so amazing with them! He clearly loves the pups he trains and treats them well. My dogs love Uncle Dakota! He produces results (well behaved dogs who know what to do and how to behave) in a loving way that dogs respect. When we went back for follow up’s, my dogs were actually happy to see him! And he was right, they like knowing they have a job and doing it (like when they stay on place). I can’t say enough good things about Dakota and my dogs back me up!

In all honesty, we were a house divided about whether to train or rehome our recently adopted lab/hound mix. He's a lot. I mean, a lot. And, we're getting older, I have some health concerns and caregiving responsibilities, and I was just overwhelmed at the idea of working this out. But, my husband was in love with the dog and willing to spend the money, so we went forward. Our pup took 5 weeks to be ready to come home, but we were increasingly impressed with the weekly video report cards from our training, Dakota. Once he rejoined us at home, it took another couple of weeks for the humans in the house to get our bearings about how to operate on a daily basis with what we have now all learned. We didn't expect the weekly follow up visits to reinforce the training (which was probably in the contract we didn't read carefully enough), so it was great to be able to report what our challenges were and focus on those with Dakota guiding us all. After 3 weeks back at home, we can now say we have a pet and not a wild animal in our home. He's still a lot, but we know what to do when he's a little too much. He obeys, crates well, and has earned back some privileges over time after a very restrictive first couple of weeks. We can all relax and be a family now. Dakota was steadfast and encouraging when I was at my most doubtful and frustrated. He promised us we would make this work and he was quick to cheer us on when we got it right. My only points of critique would be that the report cards often go to span and have to be searched for in our email each week and sometimes we felt the communications on what to expect was not completely clear. But, overall, we feel this was a very worthwhile investment and made it possible for us to keep the "pack" together.

Our lab Seamus absolutely loves Unleash Fido! He walks in like he owns the place and goes right to Jasmine! I feel good knowing he loves it and everyone there. Dakota did a phenomenal job training him, we get compliments all the time on how well behaved he is. They are so great answering all your questions and Dakota even gave my daughter tips and tricks to teach Seamus which she loved. Highly tecommend!

Update: The owner and our trainer came back out to our home to provide additional training guidance and point out some things we were doing that may have been unintentionally working against the training. One thing we’ve learned through this experience is that for some dogs and breeds, consistently maintaining the training techniques and being very structured with routines is essential for the training to translate to the home environment. We still have a ways to go, but they did help show us how to handle some recurring issues and also gave us a better sense of how good our dog can be. I’m writing this review in case it may help others in a similar situation trying to decide between training programs. We had a mixed experience with this training program. There were definitely positives, and we’re grateful for several aspects of the support we received, but ultimately we don’t feel the results matched the financial investment of nearly $4,000 (though this program was more reasonably priced than others). This training program was recommended to us via word of mouth and while it does seem to work for so many dogs, unfortunately we do not feel it was the best fit for our 4 year old extremely reactive Australian Shepherd. I had actually reached out to another trainer prior to going with Unleash Fido who had even warned me that a facility would likely not be a good fit to overcome his behavioral issues, but we ultimately chose Unleash Fido because of cost. First and foremost, our trainer was wonderful. She was extremely responsive, competent, passionate about dog training, and clearly committed. She went above and beyond by working with our dog’s packmate at no additional cost, and we saw meaningful improvements there. When we shared concerns after a month of our dog being home and regressing a bit, she readily brought him back for an additional week of board and training free of charge, which we really appreciated. I never did meet or speak with the owners so I can’t speak to that experience. That said, we have some lingering concerns with how the facility operates. There seemed to be quite a few dogs in training at one time, and I now wonder how much individualized attention each dog receives. I’ve also started to wonder whether dogs are ever turned away if they are not a good fit (likely not since their motto is that they can train any dog). Both times our dog came home hoarse and took a couple of weeks to recover, which made us wonder how much time was spent barking in a kennel. He was also supposed to go on a “field trip” for real-world exposure that I felt was very important, which ultimately did not happen. We feel that if it had, it might have been clear he wasn’t ready to come home. While he learned basic obedience skills in the facility and we gained some helpful tools as owners, those skills have not translated as well as we’d hoped into real-world situations and we are still struggling on a daily basis with our dogs reactivity. Despite faithfully following the training regimen at home for nearly two months, we still cannot take him on a walk without extreme reactivity to other dogs, people, and now even cars. We’re thankful for the effort and care shown to both of our dogs, but for the cost, we expected more lasting real-world progress. This was our third attempt using different training programs for him, and we had really hoped that the board and train would be the trick we were missing out on.