Train N Play

"You and your insightful (and successful) training are
frequently on my mind. Jack is now 2 1/2 but still a sleek 60lbs. He's an
affectionate, intelligent and energetic dog. Your training and education
helped us get past the puppy frustration and our own ignorance to see his
true spirit--he is a perfect dog. :-) Are you still offering home train & play visits for lonely at-home dogs? I think it would be a better alternative to day care as we all know no daycare environment is perfect for every dog". - Terri Sleig

Train n Play involved my trainer coming to the house and letting us know that she would take Zoe (sometimes with other dogs (socialization) and sometime not) to a local park for a hike or to run in a field and work with her on proofing the training work we had already done.

I loved this because:

  1. Zoe got to work one on one with my trainer greatly expanding her knowledge.  Think going to college where you were the only one in the class.
  2. Zoe got physical exercise in great new and exciting places.
  3. It wasn't’t any more expensive than daycare for a day.
  4. Zoe was extremely happy and was much more fulfilled in life.
  5. I didn't’t have to go somewhere and drop Zoe off and pick her up.
  6. I didn't have to do anything.

I would highly recommend this type of service over any daycare service for all of the above benefits. Thanks Gina for all your help and guidance" - Mariana, Bruce and Zoe Decker

 ergh

"My dog Zoe runs and plays outside under the supervision of someone I trust, who is an expert in dog development. She learned how to stick with me when hiking and all kinds of great skills when playing outside of my yard and neighborhood. She got exercise and more importantly exercised her mind which keeps her satisfied. This is a great addition and I would recommend it to anyone.

My dog was going to daycare 2 to 3 times a week.  When she first started she loved it.  We wanted her to be more socialized with other dogs since we were not fans of dog parks and we liked that the day care we picked used our Gina’s management methods and it was clean with great people.  But after awhile, I started to notice a few things happening with Zoe.

  1. Her resource guarding slowly was escalating.  She would aggressively growl at anything that came in the room when she had a bone or toy she was in to.  This she had never done before.
  2. She was becoming over tired.  I noticed that she was very grumpy when she came home and had a hard time just relaxing.  She was so used to playing continuously that she would constantly walk in circles in the house and couldn't’t relax.  We overcame this by working with the Daycare to force her to have more naps in a crate throughout the day. 
  3. Zoe learned to play with dogs at the daycare but didn't seem to learn to be open to dogs outside of the daycare.  She seemed fixed.  Now she forcefully lets dogs know that she doesn't’t want them in her space and probably rehearsed this over and over when she was too tired at daycare and had to continuously snap at dogs to let her relax.

I'm sure there are other behaviors that I had to deal with but these are the main ones. We were also working with Gina at the time and I felt like I was paying for Zoe to go to daycare and then paying for a trainer to help me with the behaviors that she learned at daycare a very expensive way to raise a dog.

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