Instinct Dog Behavior & Training Portland

If you're looking for the best, most compassionate trainers that offer personalized positive reinforcement training and support each step of the way THIS IS THE PLACE! Our dog Winnie was 4 months when lockdown began. Unfortunately this impacted her socialization resulting in really awful leash reactivity. There was no way to walk her and couldn't even drive past another dog. We essentially could not take her out of the house. I had at first went to another training facility and was told that she likely would never improve much or that we only had the option for shock collar training. When I first reached out to Instinct they did a consultation to match us with the best trainer for our dog's needs. We were matched with Ciera and I cannot say enough how truly amazing she was to work with! She is the absolute best and you can tell through her work that she earnestly cares about each dog and their success. Our first session we talked through realistic goals and worked out a plan of positive reinforcement that was manageable for us. At our handover sessions she also patiently "trained" us on skills to how to best manage Winnie so that we could start to get her out of the house again. Having a dog with behavioral issues can be emotional and stressful on the owners as well and she was endlessly patient and empathetic with us, celebrating each win along the way! Any pup who gets the chance to work with Ciera is a very lucky dog! Any owner as well! We did 2 packs of the 5 week sessions and saw such a drastic improvement! We began to feel confident in our ability to manage situations so that Winnie could have successful outings once more. When Ciera transferred we were suggested to work with Kaysha and could not have lucked out any further! Kaysha reviewed Winnie's history with Ciera and picked up right where Ciera left off and took us to the finish line! She continued to build upon the skills and gradually increased the "difficulty" of the tasks at our dog's pace. She is incredibly knowledgable and compassionate. Our dog is always excited to see her and train with her! She is so patient with our dog as well as us as we picked up on all the fun new functional tricks she taught Winnie. She is especially knowledgable with agility training and discovered that aspects of agility really worked for our dog to keep her focused on us during walks. Additionally she even brought one of her own dogs as a "helper dog" to set up situations that we would encounter in our daily walks - this tactic helped a ton! It was so exciting to try all the great functional tricks Kaysha taught our dog at our handover sessions. She is a fantastic trainer - the best of the best! Every step of the way we felt we had a team in our corner at Instinct. Scheduling on their system is a breeze. The personalized plan and the online system they use is fantastic, we particularly like that you and the trainer can message back and forth on how the "tasks" you were assigned went. The trainers are super accommodating - meeting all over the city based on the training we were doing - parks, petco, our home. We did 3 of the 5 week sessions and they were worth every penny! Ciera and Kaysha truly changed our dog's life and we cannot be more grateful. THIS is the place you've been looking for, for fear free positive reinforcement training! This past week we were able to do the unthinkable, the ultimate "stretch goal" - eat at a restaurant with other dogs around!