As a first time dog owner in 7 years, the family and i made a very serious decision and step when we decided to add our new family member to our "pack". Her name is Elsa and we got her just after 6 weeks old from the Austin Humane Society(Elsa arrived an hour before we got there). In our decision process of having a pet, we decided we wanted her to get the best medical care, the best toys, the best equipment, as well as the best training. The problem was that many professionals will say a puppys training and socialization is crucial from 8 to 16 weeks but many vets advise against taking your puppy outdoors until the rabies vaccination(3 months). With this conflicting information we didn't know who was right so when we began our search for socialization classes and to begin training, we wanted our puppy's health taken into account. After thorough research I found Karma Dog training. What won me over from the beginning was it was one of the ONLY places in Austin that offers puppy classes with parvo disinfected classrooms. This tells me they take the health of our friend seriously not to mention that after looking at other classes at different facilities including petsmart and petco, what Karma teaches as a bundled deal is more extensive than that of other competitors( they all offer the same training with the exception that you will have to pay for multiple weeks long classes and spend more time and money learning what Karma focuses on in their curriculum in one 8 week coarse). These include sit, stay, come, go to bed, loose leash walking, down, and leave it. Armed with this information we attended our classes and i have to say that we do not regret it one bit! Our trainer Jennifer Burns and assistant Uyen-anh are amazing! Not just because they taught us how to be more effective in our learning and training of our puppy but because when you are in their presence their is a genuine interest in what they do and they show it every class. Moments when i felt overwhelmed and thought i couldn't do it, they kept me motivated and are very nurturing in assisting you to get the best out of your training. Some things they have helped with and focused on besides curriculum thoroughout the coarse including discussions and scenarios with bite inhibition, housebreaking, how children should handle your pets, scenarios to encounter when the puppies are overly excited or distracted, as well as puppy relaxation exercises that allow your pet to be more comfortable with general handling and touching all over the body. Ultimately i know the responsibility as a dog owner is up to me to continue to enforce the positive methods of training to my puppy, and for this i am thankful beyond words to have met Jennifer and for her guidance because without her i wouldn't have seen the results and im positive my methods would have been mediocre attempts. Lastly, as with any other commitment in life, just like the Vet we chose for our Elsa, we decided that continuing education for Elsa would be best for her and anticipate training for the first year of her life! So that means i will see you next week at class Jenn!!! Thank you! I recommend this program to anyone who is SERIOUS about training their dogs because the ultimate RESPONSIBILITY is up to YOU and if you do not have the desire to train and work with your puppy on a DAILY basis, no class will be good so come motivated and don't give up!!
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