Cathy's Canines

Working with Cathy was great in many ways. She is very supportive and patient and always answered my questions thoroughly. She helped me understand how important it is to be calm and confident around my dog, so that she isn't feeding off my anxiety! The many dog "brain games" Cathy taught me are wonderful and help make sure my dog gets enough enrichment. Cathy clearly loves dogs and had put a lot of effort and care into how she works with them and their people. Most of Cathy's methods are positive and involve teaching both you and the dog how to pay attention to each other and understand each other's signals. However, potential clients should know that Cathy does use aversive methods (corrections like snapping the leash, scolding, etc.) occasionally to shape dogs' behavior. My dog is leash reactive on walks, and this was the big issue we were having that caused me to seek out a trainer in the first place. (She's not aggressive – just VERY easily overstimulated, especially by other dogs in the neighborhood. She loses it barking and lunging when she sees them while on leash, sometimes to the point I worried she'd hurt herself with how hard and quickly she'd pull or whip around.) I followed Cathy's advice for dealing with this and used only her methods religiously for months, but they didn't really ever seem to help my dog's leash reactivity on normal walks. My dog will pay attention to these corrections at home when she's not overstimulated, but if she really goes over-threshold with excitement on a walk because she sees a trigger, they don't even seem to get through to her, no matter how loud I scold, etc. (She did better on pack-walks with Cathy's or a friend's dog where that dog was setting a good example, but since she's my only dog, I needed something that would work even when it's just the two of us.) Since I wasn't seeing much if any progress on the reactivity front, I started researching and reading the work of certified veterinary behaviorists over the past few months. It turns out these experts have found that aversive training methods are not actually very effective in this situation, and they may in some cases make a dog's reactivity worse. So, I switched to using their recommended methods instead to help my dog with this issue, and I'm starting to see a marked improvement in her ability to disengage from a trigger and calm down when we're out on walks. I don't want to give the impression that I think Cathy is a bad trainer, because that is NOT true. In most ways she's fantastic, and for many dogs and their people, she may be a great fit! However, what I've learned from vet behaviorists and my experience with my dog have shown me that Cathy's approach to this particular reactivity issue isn't very effective, at least for my dog. I'm posting here in case others have the same issue, because I wish I'd known this sooner and could have saved my dog and me some stress.