My boyfriend and I are first time dog owners that adopted a 6 month old rescue. Needless to say, we've signed ourselves up for a daunting task.
While Beans is a sweet, well tempered dog there have been some strange challenges with potty training and separation anxiety. It can be really scary and frustrating to not know how to understand, communicate and help your pooch and reading all the Cesar Millan books from cover to cover weren't getting us any farther than all the well intentioned advice from friends with dogs.
I Googled a couple dog trainers in the area but after the second poop-in-the-crate disaster I settled on Marsha. She is a specialist in rescue dogs and has a resume that reads like the who's who of shelter management. She was also able to schedule us in quickly which was key as our anxiety was mounting.
Marsha spent a considerable amount of time with us and I am not kidding when I say that there was **immediate and significant positive change.** We gained knowledge about EVERYTHING that we needed to get started including nutrition, veterinary care, how to re-train the potty training, work Beans up to be able to stay alone in her crate, positive behavior reinforcement, where to buy discount dog runs and bully sticks and good local dog walkers. She also left us with a bunch of handouts and links for more reference and education.
Marsha was kind, calm and overall very very pleasant to work with. I'm sure that part of the turnaround on the dog's behavior was due to us being more confident and comfortable parents in addition to the new techniques.
I also think that Marsha is very honest; when we talked about future training sessions she said group classes would be more effective, which she doesn't provide.
This woman was clearly born to work with dogs. It's really fun to see her work with Beans and watch her come out of her shell into playful puppy mode instead of being shy and weird.
Overall our experience was beyond great and I highly recommend her to anyone that needs one-on-one help with their dog. We feel 10,000 times better which means that Beans is going to have a better time with us. read more