Brooklyn - Training Client

My partner and I were new to being pawrents and our friend recommended Donna to us. I remembered feeling so lost the first few days of bringing Brooklyn home as we did not know what to do. All the reading can never really prepare you for physically caring for another life. Once we met Donna though, we instantly felt relief. Brook loved her and was always so excited when Donna came. We chose to hire a trainer for both us and our Brook as we needed to learn, and Brooklyn had zero training even though she was already 3 years old which meant learning new things would be a tad harder. We needed guidance so that we could better provide for Brook. 

Considering we never had any experience with owning our own dog, everything was brand new to us and we were nervous, to say the least. Donna eased our fears though and made it easy for us and Brook to learn. It was a bonus that Brook is extremely food motivated. We really were not looking to have her do tricks or anything but to learn and enforce the basic cues like sit, stay, leave it, down and recall. We learned that if we had the confidence when training Brook, she responded better. 

Being able to have her properly responding to our verbal and gesture cues really helped us bond with Brook. We can bring her out with us and even off-leash now. Seeing her zoom around and still coming back to us on her own or when we call her, makes us happy. It has only been a few months, but the constant reinforcement that Donna taught us to do and the training skills we learned has allowed us to teach her new cues and even some tricks as well. She now knows how to spin, paw and something we called T-Rex - standing and balancing on her hind legs (getting better every day). We are enormously proud of how far she has come. 

The training techniques we learned from Donna are super easy to use every day and we usually do a bit in between our walks and at home. So far, Brook's been doing well although not 100% yet. But it is a constant work in progress, and we have been enjoying little wins like her offering a "down" and "wait" before we say: okay" for mealtimes. 

I would recommend Positive Reinforcement training. Sometimes it is hard not to get frustrated, but dogs really do not respond well to negative reactions from us. We do not want our pets to be afraid of us and behave well out of fear but remember that they get a reward from doing something good and do it because they want to. Definitely would not have been able to come so far with Brook if not for Donna. 

So thank you for all your help, Donna. 

From Megan, Vanja and Brooklyn