A dog’s best friend—that’s Whitney.
It is so incredibly special to work with someone who is able to follow their calling. For Whitney it is animals. One of the reasons we picked her is because of her extensive animal training career—working with marine animals and as a vet tech. While I personally have never seen her work with marine animals, she lights up talking about that part of her career. And that light shines through her dog training.
The other reason we picked her is because she utilizes positive reinforcement. No slip leads, choke collars, or e-collars. We wanted a training method that was would allow us to be consistent across the board. We also wanted a method where we wouldn’t have to rely on a piece of equipment that we would need to have on our dog 24/7, which these items are not designed to stay on a dog for a prolong period of time.
Our pooch was regressing after being neutered. The two behaviors we really needed help with was demand barking and selective reactivity on walks past fenced dogs.
While yes she is a dog trainer, she really is a “pack” trainer. She coaches and teaches both you and your dog. In fact, our pooch picked the lessons quicker than we did. So she ended up spending more time teaching us :) She was so patient with us and helping us time out when to give a cue, reward. On top of that she is so encouraging when either of us or our dog got frustrated.
Her lessons are thorough and comprehensive. It’s not just the “do this” until the dog gets it. She taught us specific commands and tricks to address the problem issues and then taught us additional commands and tricks that would support those initial direct commands. For example, with the demand barking she taught us how to effectively communicate to our dog that the demand barking would not get him what he wanted with “oops” then walking away. To support that she also taught us “wait” “leave it” “touch” to teach our dog patience.
She is a fun teacher. No cookie cutter lessons here. Every lesson was tailored to our dog and his personality. After each lesson she always made sure to end it with something fun. We learned “find it” with his favorite toy. She taught us “shaping” which was so mentally stimulating for our dog he slept for hours after. She also offered to bring over her agility set for us to try and we opted to do intro to agility with her as well.
She always sends a detailed summary of your lesson and shares additional resources such as illustrations of her lessons. She even went so far as to do research to understand and help us understand why our dog was regressing after being neutered as that wasn’t the norm. She even went above and beyond to find and share with us a hobby our water dog might like—a Dock diving group.
She is kind, calm, and so knowledgeable. Every time she came over for a lesson, our dog would lean up on her or sit on her. She is one of his favorite people ever.
We feel better equipped to be the best dog parents we can be for our dog. Our dog is thriving with the new forms of enrichment.
Whitney, we cannot thank you enough and can’t wait for our next lessons! I’m not sure who’s more excited—us or our dog.
