Houndstooth Training

I absolutely love Houndstooth Training. We decided to send our 8 year old pit/boxer mix, Lizzie, to Houndstooth for their 5 week training after bringing our daughter home from the hospital and seeing how anxious and overwhelmed she was getting. It was a tough to send her away for that long but we knew it was the best thing for all of us and this new adjustment. Olivia was very responsive to my texts and would post on their Instagram and send pictures and videos, which helped me get through the weeks without her. When we got Lizzie home, she was brought to us, and we were given an at home lesson and what a difference it made! Lizzie was calm around the baby, no longer anxious, and she was so much better with her leash walking. I can now sit on my couch with my baby girl and Lizzie together with no issues - which is exactly what I hoped for! I can’t thank Olivia, Emilee and Houndstooth Training enough for helping our Lizzie girl adjust to a new baby sister!!

Olivia end Emme trained my two male Goldendoodles for 5 weeks. While it was hard to be without them for such a long time, when they came home, I nearly cried at being able to loose leash walk them together by myself! My older doodle had some training previously, but when we introduced the puppy to him, his stubborn behavior, including his odd behaviors around food, escalated. We sent our pups to Olivia together at 22 months and 7 months, with some specific task requirements, and Olivia met our needs without hesitation. I spoke with Olivia at length before the dogs trained with her, and she really understood what we as a family needed. I can say with honesty and pure respect that Olivia more than delivered. As their primary handler, I needed to be able to walk the dogs without them pulling to injure me, to get them dressed to walk one at a time, and to have them wait while I attended to one since it is not easy to manage both bouncy pups together at the same time. I also needed to get my oldest dog back into a regular eating routine. As a handler, I needed the confidence to pull all of this off, and Olivia set us up for total success here. But most of all, we wanted Olivia to respect their friendly and loving doodle personalities in her training, and she absolutely did. Olivia trains with love for her dogs. Olivia and Emme are gentle powerhouses. Olivia uses the quietest, assertive yet most gentle voice with the pups, reinforcing her techniques with a variety of tools, and it is completely successful. Olivia trained my pups positively, with love, never negatively, and never ever with threat. My sensitive doodles are even more in tune with us than they were before they left to train with her. As with any training, you get out of it what you put into it. We practice and reinforce Olivia’s techniques daily in our homes, and while the change of environment from Olivia’s house to ours could have presented a challenge to the pups, we were surprised to find that the dogs respect the commands and our authority regardless of the environment. In fact, we have not seen much testing or backsliding. We correct regularly, and only once did we have an issue that had the most strange trigger, but this was able to be corrected while we boarded them for a week with Olivia over a holiday period. I am so grateful to have found Olivia because she has helped our dogs integrate into our family. We are thinking of doing off leash training next with Olivia, because we definitely see how that could be useful, the only thing stopping me is anxiety at being apart from them again! I can recommend Olivia without hesitation and with confidence can say that she will solve your most challenging dog issues.

Olivia and her team are phenomenal! I cannot say enough good things about them. I have a rescue rott/lab mix, who became dog aggressive after being attacked by other dogs. I also have a pandemic puppy great dane/husky mix, who picked up his sister’s barking and lunging (not to mention he was 75 lbs at 6 months and was a pain to walk). After staying with Olivia for 5+ weeks, I could not recognize my dogs - totally different in a good way. They walk beside us, instead of pulling us as they used to. They no longer bark nor lunge at other dogs on walks - I have been able to take them to the dog park (it’s been 3+ years since my rott/lab mix has been there!!). Since my dogs have come home, Olivia has stayed in touch with us to see how they’re doing. She also has been responsive to my many, many questions. Again, cannot say enough good things about Houndstooth. Would recommend 10/10.