Dog Academy of NC, LLC

We are new dog owners and Mike is AMAZING. Our puppy is so well behaved, does what he has been taught and Mike also ensures the owners being taught about the importance of teaching and reading a dogs behavior. We learned so much and felt super comfortable taking our puppy home. Wonderful Service, wonderful people. We couldn't imagine another dog trainer with so much experience, knowledge and reasonable priced. We can 100% recommend! THANK YOU MIKE AND SANDRA!

Michael is truly the dog whisperer. His techniques are simple, straight forward and focus on developing strong communication with your dog. We have learned that consistency and calmness with our pup are key! We adopted our 5 month old Weimaraner puppy from Michael and Sandra in November. They had been working with her for few weeks on her training before we picked her up. On the day we picked her up, Michael spent almost 1.5 hours with us going over the best ways to communicate with our new pup, how to structure a training lesson, etc. We walked away thinking we knew it all! Fast forward a week, and our dog was whining, barking, and driving us nuts. We returned to Michael with our list of questions and he patently walked us through how we could structure walks, lessons, and playtime with our pup. The big lynchpin was our actions were contributing to our pup's poor behavior and Michael helped us see this without making us feel judged or like we were doing things wrong. When got home, we put the techniques into play, and it was like we had a new dog! Over the weeks, we started to see some behaviors we weren't excited in our pup including excessive whining while in her crate. We texted Michael and Sandra for advice. Michael came out to our home to observe how we were interacting with the dog and quickly offered us coaching on how to best communicate to the dog. Truth be told, this was the same coaching he gave us on day 1 but it became more clear to us after more time with our pup - his methods work, but consistency is key!!! Michael and Sandra are amazing - professional, responsive, knowledgeable. They know what they are doing when it comes to training dogs and helping to establish lines of communication with dogs. We are very happy to have found them and would highly recommend adopting a dog from them and/or working with them on training.

Dog Lovers Beware: I sent a $500 deposit to secure a puppy from Sandra, the owner of this business. I asked her if she had done the genetic panel screening for the litter, and replied she had but was waiting for results. She failed to produce them. She then claimed she had done the test but to the parents, but instead sent me a pending status report. After a month she failed to produce any. I live in Florida so I asked her if the puppy would fit in a Sherpa so I could fly him home and she said yes, but that wasn’t true. The airlines require the dog/puppy be able to stand and turn and that wasn’t the case. These are long legged dogs. She then claimed that she was not aware of the airline regulations but instead insisted he could travel crammed in the Sherpa, that another dog did before. Unethical and illegal. The airlines would not have allowed it nor would I had done it to the puppy. She then proposed that I pay for a dog nanny at $450 but at $2000 for the puppy , incurring for another unexpected cost was not reasonable to me. So I asked her to incur the cost because she gave me faulty information in which I based my travel plans on. She refused and begrudgingly agreed to pay for half the cost. When I disagreed, she gave me back the deposit and told me the puppy was no longer mine. She did give me a date on when the puppy was ready to go home and I kindly ask her if I could pick him up a week later. I never imagined that it was going to be another reason to get more money and create a crisis. In sum, I was excited to have the puppy. I was emotionally invested, I even gave him a name. I feel she took the deposit, kept it for a month and then failed to make the process work for me. I believe she was not honest with me with the genetic testing, with the Sherpa, and she failed to assume responsibility for the way she handled the whole process. She failed me as her client and even worst she failed to care and protect for the well being of the puppy. There are many breeders more caring, professional, accommodating and reliable out there to settle for this.