Julio Hernandez K-9

Seeing so many glowing reviews, I had planned on boarding my dog here for an upcoming trip and saw they did training as well. I was excited to check this place out! I have a fearful reactive dog that they claimed they could work with for behavioral training and to come check them out. I was APPALLED at the interactions I had and witnessed here. If you have no interest in working on the root cause of your dog's issues, only want to force them into submission, and treat only the symptoms of a behavioral issue and not the cause, this is the place for you. If you care about the well-being of your dog and want to actually work on the issue, run far away from here and look elsewhere. When I showed up for a consultation, it turned out they had actually just invited me out to one of their scheduled protection training classes. The trainer was working with a young girl and her young GSD. He had the dog equipped with a prong collar (incorrectly positioned on the dog's neck) and was using an excessive amount of force with this tool. While prong collars have their place in training, this trainer seemed to not know how to handle any form of interaction with a dog unless it was with a prong or E collar. He spoke with me 5 minutes tops, observed my dog who was beyond over-threshold in the given environment, noted she seemed to be behaving fine, and promptly suggested a prong or E collar, having zero observation of her negative behaviors and only seeing her fearfulness. When I expressed a disinterest in such methods and felt that her behaviors could be readily modified with less invasive methods, he became belligerent in the remainder of the conversation, suggesting that by not having interest in a prong collar to address the behavior, I'd rather my dog just bite someone (???). Note, dear reader, that such aversive methods are strongly advised against by reputable trainers in dogs whose negative behaviors are fear-based due to the potential to amplify the behaviors or teach a dog to hide the "symptoms" of the problem without ever actually addressing the problem itself. After our brief conversation, he started the group training session that he was actually there for. He performed a demonstration with one of his younger dogs. The dog was visibly eager and while it listened to the majority of the given commands, did continue a behavior it had been instructed to stop. The trainer's response was to knee his own dog in the chest while scolding it. Part way through the training session he was hosting, he recommended I bring my dog back out and stand adjacent to where he was doing the training to see if he could observe my dog reacting to the training dogs. While training the other dogs, he had a small whip used to just crack in the air to get the dogs worked up for their protection work. Of which my dog was TERRIFIED of. I returned her to our vehicle immediately. When he was done, he indicated he hadn't seen her react to the dogs. I told him she was over threshold and that she ran cowering when he cracked the whip. He jokingly suggested I just get one of those to make my dog listen. After witnessing how he treats his own dog when it wasn't listening to him, I would never fathom leaving my dog in his care. I promptly canceled the boarding plans I had with them. I resorted to driving an hour away to board my dogs any time it was needed instead of considering boarding here, as I could never have peace of mind in knowing my dog was safe and comfortable if he treats his own dogs so aggressively, so blatantly. I would strongly advise against using this facility for boarding OR training, particularly behavior modification. The trainer appears unable to work with a dog unless aversive methods are used. His ego can readily be seen in his responses to other poor reviews. We've since worked with other trainers that have approached my dog's fear-based reactivity in much more appropriate ways that don't involve shocking/pronging the symptoms away. She's done a complete 180 and I have no doubt in my mind she'd have worsened if trained here

Julio was excellent to work with. I had never had a working line pup before and he was so great with giving information and advice. You can tell Julio really cares about the health of his dogs and the pups that come from his kennel. I can’t say enough great things about our dog from Julio either. She is amazing - by far and away the smartest dog I have ever owned and constantly impresses me and others we work with in civil protection, obedience, etc. if you’re looking for a working shepherd dog and are willing to put in the work to enrich that dog, you won’t find a better starting place than the operator and the dogs from Kriegshund-Zug Kennels!

At my first training session, before we started, he had a club member do a demo and I saw real time correction and change in the dogs behavior. When Julio worked with my dog, he was able to get him to listen and react to commands both verbal and non verbal. Price & product are worth it. Prices are more than competitive. His competence in dog behavior and passion were awesome to see. Its an outdoor training arena. I will be bringing my boy back for sure. There is work involved. Its not a, drop ur dog off and pick them up a new animal, kind of place. This is where dogs and owners learn together and both become better for one another.