Good Dog Enrichment & Training

We started working with Good Dog several months ago. After adopting our youngest dog in October of last year, we realized that some of the behavioral hurdles might be helped by more outlet. After exploring several options, we tried Good Dog for an agility drop in class, and never looked back! Every single trainer and staff member at Good Dog we’ve had communication with has been so kind, authentic, and easy to work with! Good Dog really honors a fear free, force free approach in every interaction and their classes are so good about keeping dogs separated visually and physically so that they don’t get overexcited. Since starting Lu in agility classes to see if it helps with her resource guarding, physical outlet, and high work need due to her breed, we’ve also enrolled our other dog, Bernie. Bernie is a slow to warm up dog who needs a lot of space and patience, so we thought he wouldn’t enjoy classes. After seeing the way that they support Lu, her autonomy, and how to work with her, we brought Bernie too. He loves so many of the trainers now; he’s especially warmed up to Robin and Avery, which is incredible to see! It’s done wonders for both of them, their confidence, and they get so excited to go to class! If you’re thinking about using good dog for any of their services… do it. You won’t be sorry, and you’ll just add more people who love your dog and advocate for them!

We fell in love with and adopted a snuggly puppy ... and quickly realized we were in over our heads. We'd never had a puppy, much less a people-reactive dog, or one that looooooved playing with other dogs so much. Thank goodness we found Good Dog to help us learn the science behind his reactivity, how to build a daily life that works for us and him, and how to read dog behavior (because not all dogs love him as much as he loves them). But perhaps the best part of all is having a whole team of humans who understand our little guy and love him as much as we do. Big thanks to Cam, Archie, Kailey, Maggie, Cait, and the whole team for (a) making the effort to understand the dogs with big feelings and (b) making it so much fun to train with them.

We took our puppy Rumi to Good Dog STL four years ago, with the hopes of her becoming a therapy dog. She started at 12 weeks in their 4 week boot camp, where she got to socialize and learn to play with other pups. The trainers would take short videos of her training so we could practice what she learned at home. I've never had a dog as tiny as Rumi (she is 10 lbs full grown and probably started at Good Dog when she was 5 lbs) and I felt safe with her being at Good Dog. They have huge windows along the street so you can see how they are with the dogs and the general set up. There were always at least two trainers in the room and dogs were in sections so it seemed contained, not overwhelming, and safe. We also went to Good Dog for private lessons and the tricks class. The tricks class was super fun and we learned tricks that were not only cute, but helped strengthen my pups legs. Rumi has been a therapy dog for 3.5 years now and we continued our training for her to be a touch therapy dog with a local non-profit. I truly believe Rumi was set up for success with all her early and subsequent training at Good Dog.