My husband and I reached out to Adam to help train our new puppy, Gia.
Strengths:
1. Adam is an extremely patient listener - this is crucial IMO, since, as new pet-parent, you will find yourself getting worked up with a lot of things and will definitely appreciate someone that listens to you and tries to help with your questions and concerns. He is also available via text at times when you need his advise.
2. Adam has been incredibly flexible with scheduling training sessions. We requested to defer the last session until she is fully vaccinated to go outdoors and Adam instantly agreed. We truly appreciate his flexibility.
3. He is very good with providing additional resources to help us as new pawrents - how to keep her engaged, slow down her eating (she used to inhale her food, she doesn't anymore), use kong in a variety of different ways, prevent her from mouthing, etc
4. The desensitization process that Adam outlined for us worked remarkably well - in just 4 weeks, Gia is now okay riding in cars, with hair-dryers and us vacuum-ing the house around her (she was petrified of these things initially - now she has learnt to co-exist with them around her)
5. At 14 weeks, after having socialized her with some other pups, including her littermates - we have realized that Gia understands and follows more commands than most of them. We would like to thank Adam for training us to train her better.
Areas of Improvement:
1. While our puppy has picked up amazingly well, some sessions felt rushed - for instance, 'close' cue at week 4 is still something that wasn't demonstrated quite in detail and we might need to work on it again during our last session.
2. The puppy schedule that Adam provided was very standard and not tailored to specific needs of our pup (also alludes to the price point mentioned below). Example - our puppy loves meeting new people but jumps up on them while greeting them. This is something my husband and I haven't been able to fix over the past 3-4 weeks.
3. We felt that the desensitization checklist is a laundry list of items that cannot be covered in 5 weeks. As a personal preference, we would have loved to see this as part of the continued learning portion beyond the training itself.
4. In addition to the handout which details steps for each command, it would be super helpful to get video tutorials to follow when training throughout the week on our own.
5. While we understand the importance of reviews, constantly reminding us to post a *positive* review before the end of all training sessions was overwhelming for us.
!!! Subjective: We felt the training was pricey - $75 per session - this is our subjective opinion because we had read a lot of books and looked at a ton of training videos online in preparation for getting our first pup. As such, we found most of the basic commands redundant and repetitive.
With everything we've said, Gia loves her training sessions with Adam and we would totally recommend getting an initial evaluation (it's FREE) to gauge whether this is a good fit for you and your furry baby :) read more