BTS K9 Dog Training and Boarding

When asked about our personal experience, I am left wondering where do I even start?

 Simple, the beginning. We lost our long time family companion in November ’24. You don’t realize how routine life becomes by the time your dog becomes a “senior” pet. The years of obedience and communication between you, your family and your dog can easily be taken for granted. I believe thats where we went wrong. After losing her, our family adopted a 7 month old, female, blue staffy. She quickly went to work mending hearts and taking up space in our home. Still we wanted the chance to raise 2 dogs of a younger age to grow up together. Well, we really went for younger! In walked our mastiff mix girl, at only 2 months old. 

Honestly, there should be a caution binder in the vets office of the things NOT TO DO after a loss of a pet. However, here we are! These girls made fast friends, inseparable sibling like companions. Great with our young kids as well as family and friends. We even were able to enjoy calm get togethers with other pups for socialization. Everything was fantastic. Or so we thought… Let me back up, we always intended on professional obedience training. Our first consultation with BTSK9 (recommended by our rescue) was eye opening. When we first adopted our mastiff mix, we felt she may be too young to really absorb the level of training we hoped for. So we held off. That was our second mistake. Flash forward 5 months to now, we scheduled our desired plan for further obedience training with BTSK9. Our two pups continued to grow and play, HARD! They were very rough with one another, but loved each other even harder. A pattern of corrections from one dog to another became more frequent. Although we had a strict routine at home as for kenneling overnight, a fight broke out when we failed to stick to that schedule. We ended up separating the pups for a week. That separation rolled into our scheduled drop off for the 2 week board and train sessions. It couldn’t have come at a better time. We were all stressed to the max, living separately in a busy home, rotating the girls in and out of the common areas all while trying to balance one on one attention for them and our families needs. Yesterday our girls graduated from their stay, with the very impressive trainers at BTSK9. I simply am not able to express in writing the SIGNIFICANT growth each dog made! We were jaw dropped when each of the dogs was walked out and demonstrated their new skills. We couldn’t wait to report back to family! After spending quite a bit of time learning how to handle each dog with their new set of commands and “gear”, we confidently set out to take them home. That positive energy continued to overflow once home, even with some expected anxiety of the need to continue with separation temporarily. We will work towards reintegrating them. Until then we will work hard to uphold this new level of training while taking walks with both and letting them be together through gated doorways. We are a full 24 hours in and are nothing, if not determined to continue supporting each dog with individual focus and the attention they require to meet our training goals and to go beyond! We look forward to an uneventful, follow up training session next month. To Elena, Rebecca and all of the trainers who participated in this process with Rafe & Pogue, THANK YOU for this new, strong foundation. Thank you for restoring the calm energy in our home while “reprogramming” our beloved pups. We so appreciate each and every one of you and value the dedication you have to your craft. Lastly, thank you all for the individualized training plan and care you provided to our dogs while boarded in your facility. Our family highly recommends BTSK9 as a whole, for all who may be experiencing struggles in their own training journey, with their dogs.

Absolutely amazing with helping me manage my German Shepard named Stella who I adopted about 2 years and has dog fear based aggression. My fur baby Stella was attacked by a dog when she was a puppy and previous owners didn’t work with her at all on it or basic obedience training. BTS K9 has been so amazing at helping me manage her fear based dog aggression. Now I say “managed” as she is a senior 8 now soon to be 9 so there is no way to work through 7 years of trauma in her lifetime (which I knew) but I am so happy that I am more confident taking her places and she is more confident because of it too. I used to be scared taking her anywhere but our usual spots. Now I take her everywhere with me if I can and she absolutely loves it! I also loved how all the staff are so knowledgeable including the receptionist and were very transparent about what would and wouldn’t work for Stella. I highly recommend them to all my friends, families, and neighbors even if it’s far I’m telling you it’s worth the drive and every penny spent! 🙌

The short version: I would leave 20 stars if I could. The long version: Picture this. My husband and I at a campsite with our dogs. My husband is standing in the woods trying to keep both our dogs by him who are absolutely losing their minds (because God forbid another dog be in their presence or close to them). I am in a fit of rage trying to deconstruct our tent and pack up the car with bloody knees because one of my dogs drug me through the gravel because another dog looked in their direction. Camping trip...over. The next day I am sending in inquiries to everyone around for dog training. They did fine as long as we were in the house, but once we crossed the front door threshold, a new hell was always upon us. Enter Elena, the owner of BTSK9. First off the quick response. She responded in under an hour to my inquiry (on a Sunday) and set up a phone appt with me for the same day. We talked about goals and budget and everything we were hoping to achieve. She explained all the different options and was very thorough in expectations. Then came scheduling. We had all types of scheduling conflicts and couldn't work out a good time for us to do a drop off. Elena crushed this too and worked out all of our details for us and made it as smooth as possible. 10/10 The actual training. I can't say enough good things about this. They send updates, pictures, videos of your dogs everyday while they are in training. It's incredible. If you have a question, they are so quick to answer. You truly don't have a worrying feeling about your dogs in their care. It's obvious all the trainers love what they do and you can see that in all the videos they send. The turnover class. Honestly this was my favorite part of the whole experience. When it's time to go pick up your now incredibly trained pooches, they spend hours with you to go over everything they have taught them and teach you how to use all the tools they provide. Nicole did the majority of our turnover class and she was beyond incredible. She spent a good chunk of time explaining how to work the e-collars and prong collars, what all they were able to accomplish during their time there and made sure that we had a good understanding. It's also not a one size fits all training plan. Our dogs responded to training differently and she made sure to explain what worked well for each of them and what each dog didn't have a good response to. When they brought out the dogs, she would show us the skill and then make each of us do it too so she could make sure we were doing it correctly. Amazing. One of our biggest concerns and things we were working on was dog reactivity, especially with our lab. Not only did they knock this behavior down to a manageable level, but Mike brought out another dog to put us in a scenario to teach us the commands and control for our dog for if he is reactive. No more dragging ourselves away in embarrassment. There are not enough words to explain how amazing this experience was from start to finish. Before we would have to psych ourselves and mentally prepare when we were taking the dogs out of the house. Now they both have such great leash manners, have chilled out so much, and all the around manageability is truly life changing.