Brookside Walk + Train

OMG when I tell you that Dinyee and her team changed out lives- I am telling the honest truth We brought our terrier rescue who is almost 10 years old to the 5-week foundations class and he is a new dog. He went from being on Prozac and very anxious to a quiet and calm dog. We are all working hard but the foundation has been set and we could not be happier. I would recommend this team to anyone with a puppy or an old guy like Brody.

Brookside took our dog from being afraid of everything to an almost perfectly trained and confident pup. We chose them for training because we knew he’d have continuous, structured exposure to other dogs; we loved the ongoing communal aspect of the business, with monthly training maintenance sessions, daycare, and boarding; and because most of the intensive trainings in the area required lengthy boarding, and we wanted to be with our dog in the evenings. Our dog was adopted from KY and afraid of other dogs, difficult to take on walks, and afraid and growling around some people. After the 8 week daytime training last summer, he had a great heel and wonderful recall that allows us to go on hikes off leash, but most importantly, he (and we!) learned structure that makes us confident that he knows that we are in control and that we can teach him anything. It’s a joy to have a dog that we can take anywhere and know that he will behave well. Do not expect frills from Brookside - you will not get daily updates (in fact, the human training happens after the dog training, which was hard for us but best in the long run!), there are no monitoring cameras or pics (although we are elated when he gets a cameo on the Instagram), and the owner will tell it to you how it is without sugar coating. What you do get is amazing training, a responsive staff, and a whole ecosystem of dog services (we even got a house call to help with desensitizing our dog to our cat). We love Brookside enough to drive from Southie to keep our dog in daycare once a week a year later. It’s a great place that has done wonders for us and our dog.

There is no easy way to put this: Our puppy died while under the supervision and care of Brookside Walk+Train. We had been using Brookside for daycare services (PPL) since December 2021. In February 2022, we were traveling out of town for the weekend and signed up for boarding services with Brookside for the first time for that weekend. We made our request several weeks ahead of time. We were assigned a boarder that our puppy had regularly interacted with while at daycare and was familiar with. When we dropped off our puppy to be boarded for that weekend, Brookside informed us at the last minute that the pre-assigned boarder was no longer available, and our puppy was re-assigned to a different boarder, who we believe was someone our puppy was not familiar with. The last minute nature of the change gave us little option but to go with the new boarder since our flight was very early the next morning. A few hours after we dropped off our puppy, we received a call from Brookside informing us that our puppy got loose while being transported, ran into the street, and died after being hit by a car. Needless to say, we were devastated. After this incident, we have been disappointed by how Brookside has handled the situation. For example, even after we followed up specifically to ask Brookside to refund us the money for services we had pre-paid for, it took them over 2 months to do so. As a result, we felt like we were being treated with lower priority.