Opportunity Barks Behavior & Training

The whole staff at Opportunity Barks has been amazing! I enrolled my puppy in puppy classes and there’s consistent specific feedback to help him grow more confident as well as different recommendations for some of their other programs, like a puppy social in the woods, that’s already made some serious differences. I also want to give an extra shoutout to Monica who went WAY above and beyond helping me with an issue that was entirely my problem (on a holiday weekend, no less)! It just speaks to what a good culture the place seems to have in wanting to help, which makes me so much more comfortable following their direction, and my pup is benefiting from the work that we are doing. I highly recommend anyone who is looking into doing some early training or socialization to sign up here!

I had an evaluation for my dog Feb 29th. It's been 11 weeks and I'm still waiting for the writeup that is supposed to follow that includes details about the session and advised next steps for training. I paid $175 to have this company ghost me after the evaluation. In April after multiple follow ups and a form submission on their website they did reach out with some excuse about having a spam issue, but I still haven't heard back despite me following up three more times.

My husband and I adopted our 7 month old puppy Reggie right before Christmas, and knew we needed some help pretty much immediately. He was such a sweet boy, but had no "off" switch. He was very toy fixated and would nip and bite at us when he was frustrated from not getting what he wanted. No amount of stern "no's", or pretend yelping helped him calm down. It was clear that he was having trouble self regulating. We started with 3 weeks of day training in Old City, and we quickly saw so much progress that I didn't think was possible. We ended up opting for the full 6 week program, and it was such an easy choice to make, after seeing how much Reg was getting out of the classes. He was able to release his toys on command now and turn his brain off of the fixation from the toy to us when we asked. He learned how to quickly go from play, to relaxation, and we saw a huge improvement on his impulse control skills. Plus we were learning just how much rest and sleep this poor puppy really was needing on a daily basis in order to make better decisions during waking hours. Our trainer, Britt, really is the best kind of dog trainer there is. She's so incredibly knowledgeable, and compassionate. She looped us in every day about Reggie's progress, and I always looked forward to her daily updates and videos. Our 1:1 classes gave us so much clarity on what they were working on, and how to level up at home. She was always willing to answer our questions, and when I would over-fixate on socializing him with other dogs (trauma from owning a reactive dog for years before), she explained how socialization really means neutrality. It was a big learning experience for our whole family, not just the pup! We are officially an OpBarks family through and through, and I will always recommend them to anyone with a dog. Reggie might have graduated, but he'll always be a return customer, leveling up as he gets older and wiser.