Bark Busters Home Dog Training Greater San Diego

UPDATE: I’m updating my original 6-month review now that it has been a full year since we hired Bark Busters to help with our rescue dog Mimi. As first-time dog owners, the early support really did help us. Having someone we could call during those overwhelming first months was a relief. Over time, though, I realized I was hoping the training would shift toward more positive reinforcement. The constant, harsher corrections worked at first but eventually didn’t seem effective anymore and started affecting my relationship with Mimi. I noticed this during a family trip where Mimi, who is usually fearful of strangers, bonded more easily with my husband and his family. She gravitated toward them when scared, and I realized it might be because they weren’t following the correction-heavy approach, while I was. I also asked for help with Mimi’s fear and reactivity toward other dogs, but was told they didn’t have dogs available for training and that I would need to bring a calm, socialized dog myself. As a non-trainer, that was very hard, but we tried by traveling many hours to introduce her to my husband’s family dog. The experience ended up being chaotic since the family didn’t fully understand what the process required, and new people and dogs kept appearing even though Mimi wasn’t ready. Her reactivity came back in that environment, which made me feel like the training had only put a bandaid on deeper fear issues. Maybe I should have clarified expectations better from the start, but with a high-need dog and being new to all of this, I didn’t know what to expect. Since then, we’ve switched to a positive reinforcement trainer who organizes structured group activities. Mimi is still scared of bigger dogs and can still be reactive, but she’s improving slowly and has been able to meet a few smaller dogs. She’s also still fearful of people, but she nips a lot less now, so progress is happening. Overall, Bark Busters helped us in the beginning, but long-term we found that a different, more positive approach has been a better fit for Mimi. ORIGINAL REVIEW: We’ve been working with Jenna at Bark Busters for about six months to help our rescue chihuahua mix, Mimi, and the progress has been amazing. We started training just two weeks after adopting her. She came to us with several behavior issues due to past trauma. She had been rescued, returned once, and then fostered before joining our family. At first, Mimi had severe separation anxiety. She would escape her playpen, pace, and howl loudly whenever we left the house. Now, with Jenna’s guidance and the time we’ve put into her training, we can leave her alone for up to three hours. She’ll fall asleep and wait for us quietly. You can see her in one of the photos we attached. She was also very reactive to other dogs, making walks and public outings tough. With Jenna’s help, she’s much calmer now. We can take her on walks and even to restaurants with dogs around. We’re currently introducing her to other dogs slowly. While she still stays on a leash and sometimes growls or nibbles, she’s able to get very close. That’s a huge improvement from where we started. We included a photo of one of those moments too. Training Mimi has helped her become more confident, happy, and relaxed. We’re so grateful for Jenna’s support and excited to keep working with her to help Mimi live her best life. Highly recommend Bark Busters to anyone with a rescue pup who needs extra care and guidance.

We have two rescue pups from Tijuana that we adopted when they were about four months old. To make things even more challenging, they’re littermates. Our male dog, Rocky, has had behavioral issues for years and even bit a few guests at our house. I was at my breaking point and ready to send him back to TJ—until my wife watched a TED Talk by Justin. She convinced me to give Rocky one last chance and called Justin for help. I’ll admit I was skeptical, but after just one session, I was blown away. Justin showed us how to stop both dogs from charging the front door when someone comes over, taught us how to end the constant yard barking, and helped us finally understand how to communicate with them effectively. Since then, he’s come back for two more sessions, and the improvement has been incredible. Justin’s methods are simple, practical, and they truly work. After three years of frustration, we finally feel like we have control—and peace—at home.

I am not one to typically write reviews, but I had to come on here and say how wonderful Jenna has been in all of our time spent together. She is extremely knowledgeable with dog behaviors and helped us tremendously with our two pups. We have two large dogs (one Australian Shepherd - Harley, and one Goldendoodle - Cooper) and have been experiencing severe aggression problems with our Aussie, Harley. Long story short, Harley barking excessively and trying to jump through our window to get to the maintenance guy led to redirected aggression towards Cooper who unfortunately suffered a few attacks. He is very sweet and loving to those that know him, but not great with strangers and became very protective once he saw the maintenance guy trying to open our door. The attacks on Cooper occurred multiple times in two days. While breaking up the last fight, my partner was bit very badly on her hand, and it was a very emotional time as we didn't know what we were going to do. We had to take both dogs out separately, keep one in the bedroom at all times, and even split them up while going to sleep. Cooper hated this to say the least because he has always slept next to me. Harley couldn't be in the same room as Coop without wanting to go straight for him and attack him. Jenna came over to assess the situation and gave us EXTREMELY helpful training tools/knowledge to keep Harley in the "green zone". She consistently checked in with us, made two house visits to make sure we were sticking to the training plan, and answered our million questions with grace. Over the course of the next few weeks, we have made SO much progress. Both of our dogs now sleep together again in the same room, go potty/go on pack walks together daily, and Harley no longer wants to fight Cooper every chance he gets. He still acts territorial over certain things which we are working on, but truth be told, Harley has not gone at Cooper ONCE since our training started. Jenna was forward telling us it would take a lot of training but if the effort was put in, she was confident we could get them back to a healthy place which is exactly what we did. By no means are either of our dogs perfect (yes they are) but the progress we've made with Jenna's help has made our lives SO much easier. I highly recommend Bark Busters to anyone struggling with your furry one's behaviors!!

GAME CHANGER. I can't recommend Justin enough to anyone that is struggling with aggression between their dogs. We have two rescues - one young male Shepherd-mix, growing into his body (about 10 months old), and an old stubborn male hound dog very set in his ways (12+ years old). When we called Justin, we were overwhelmed, the dogs were completely separated, and we couldn't see how we were going to get to the other side. So, what happened? At first, our new pup was doing great with our older dog. But as he grew, he began to challenge the older dog. And then all hell broke loose after a trial session with our young pup at a group dog camp. When he came home, he began attacking the older dog, seemingly unprovoked. Things quickly escalated, until we couldn't keep them in the same room. It was a mess of a situation. We got a referral to Justin, and after the first in-person meeting, our young dog reverted back to the sweet pup that he had been before. Yes, I cried, and nope, I'm not exaggerating. Justin taught us how to manage the relationship between the dogs, but even more important than that, the relationship between us and the dogs. We went from being distraught about the future of the dogs in our home, back to a dog love-fest. To make sure we were staying on track, Justin checked in often and offered advice. He has been so professional and genuinely invested in our success. I don't really write reviews, but Justin's methods are so effective, I wanted to share so others could benefit. Our dogs are part of our family, so it felt a bit like therapy - probably more for the humans than the dogs. :) Bottomline is that all of these 5 star reviews are legit. We are very grateful to have found him.