Augusta Dog Training And Doggy Daycare - Long Lake

This review is for both the Long Lake facility and Augusta's board & train program. A year ago, my husband and I had a hare brained idea to get a golden retriever puppy when I was ten weeks pregnant. We thought we'd get the terrible puppy phase over with by the time the baby arrived, and we were also naive to how terrible the puppy phase could be. We have an older golden who we now know, in retrospect, was a really good puppy. We didn't know how much of a terror our new puppy, Dusty, could be. Name your bad behavior, and he did it. We did our own training with him, we exercised him every day, we gave him ample opportunity to run around in the back yard -- nothing worked. We thought that bringing him to doggy daycare would provide us some relief from his rambunctiousness during the day. As it turned out, he was a bully at daycare. Augusta Long Lake tried to work with him -- they gave him frequent time outs to dial down his energy level -- but he continued with his bad behavior, and they ultimately asked him to leave and not come back. I see this as a good thing. It means that they don't let dogs bully and push around other dogs. Your dog won't go to Augusta Long Lake and get beat up by dogs like mine. Desperate for a solution, we enrolled Dusty in Augusta's board & train program. Shortly after our baby arrived, we sent our dog to their facility south of the Twin Cities. The benefit was two-fold: we had 30 peaceful days to adjust to being new parents, and we knew that when Dusty came back, he'd be better behaved. And that's indeed what happened. Dave the trainer taught him things like recall, learning how to settle, the "place" command, and walking nicely next to a baby stroller. Dusty wasn't suddenly as well behaved as a seeing eye dog or anything, but Dave provided a really good foundation that we could subsequently build off of. Dusty is now 13 months old and totally awesome. His recall is way better than our older dog's recall. I go running with him, and he's a delight on the leash. He is sweet and gentle with our infant. He now knows how to just chill on his bed rather than tearing around the house like a lunatic all the time. I never thought I'd actually like him, but I'm now really, really fond of him. All in all, there are two lessons here. #1.) Don't get a puppy within *at least* a year of having a baby. #2.) If you screw that part up, enlist the help of Augusta, because they're great.