Ridgeside K9 Nashville

My dog, Kai, and I had such a positive experience with Jeff and the team at Ridgeside K9. I’ve worked with a lot of trainers in the past, and I really appreciated his approach and training methods. Kai was 4 years old when I reached out for help. She struggled with separation anxiety, excessive barking, jumping, and lacked a lot of obedience. I struggled with the time/bandwidth to be consistent working on it over the years. After training with Jeff, I’m more than pleased with the results. Her recall and place work is much better than I ever imagined. Her attentiveness and eagerness to please reduced the barking issue significantly. Overall she’s not just a better dog, she has a better quality of life.

Jeff and Judy were awesome to work with! Judy was the first person I reached out to about training my dog, she was super knowledgeable and gave me the rundown on everything before training and answered all my questions. She was super sweet and a joy to talk to! When it came to training, Jeff came over and met my dog and talked us through all of her behaviors and why she does certain things and what the strategy was for training. When she started training he sent us videos everyday of her and how she was doing and what shes been learning, and then when he dropped her off he spent a couple of hours teaching us how to keep up with her and continue working with her and stressed if we ever need help to call him whenever. She is so well trained now and it is such a relief to know we can do so many things with her now and know how to correct her behavior when necessary. As someone who has had dogs their whole life, I cant recommend Ridgeside K9 Nashville enough!

Highly recommend Ridgeside K9 Nashville. From beginning to end, there’s someone helping you along the way. Judy was great and answered all my questions when it came to getting my sweet boy set up for training. She was even able to get him in a little earlier than the original date which was wonderful. Jeff is absolutely amazing at what he does. When he picked Nash up, he let me know what all to expect. During the course of Nash’s two week training I received daily videos and pictures showing what all Nash was learning and the things that he needed more work on. Along the way, Jeff answered any questions I had. When it came time for Nash to come home, Jeff spent a few hours with me showing me how the collar and remote worked. He also showed me everything Nash had learned and taught me how to carry on with Nash’s training. Jeff has been in contact every day since to make sure things are going well and has even offered to come back and help if need be. Ridgeside K9 is absolutely wonderful and they make you feel like family from day one.

I cannot express how thankful and appreciative I am of Jeff at Ridgeside K9 Nashville! We have two large dogs, Apollo (3) and Mahni (2). We adopted Mahni when she was 4 months. Apollo is a sweet boy but we know very little about his background except that he was neglected, and is fearful and anxious of just about anyone and anything. As with any rescue, we've had to go slow, have a lot of patience, and build trust. As Jeff says, crawl, walk, run. Although both our dogs learned good habits from one another, they also learned unmanageable ones. Their recall was becoming awful and I was at a point where I was afraid to walk the both of them on my own. I couldn't control their pulling or barking when they saw other dogs or small animals. They had pulled their leashes out of my hands several times and even dragged me to the ground once. I felt embarrassed as an owner who couldn't handle her dogs. This is when I found Jeff online, his glowing reviews, and gave him a call. Over the phone he immediately made me feel better because he was here to help us every step of the way. To say he is worth every single penny is an understatement. Prior to any official contract or payment being made, he came to meet Mahni and Apollo. Immediately, both dogs loved him. We weren't concerned about Mahni but Apollo is a wild card. Knowing dogs have a pretty good judge of character and seeing how comfortable Apollo was with him from the start sold us immediately. Our main goals for entrusting Jeff with our dogs were: 1. Take them on manageable walks. 2. Better their recall alone, but especially together. 3. Increase Apollo's confidence (knowing this would help with training but also his personal well being) Not a day went by where we didn't receive some kind of picture or video update of how they were doing to see the progress they were making. Any and every question we had (and we had a lot) he answered and explained in detail. He was just as patient with us as he was with our fur babies. We knew because of Apollo's background he wouldn't come back the "perfect" dog and wouldn't be at Mahni's level--and we were okay with that. Jeff adjusted his training with Apollo in a way that made him feel safe and trusting of Jeff. (In teacher terms, we call those accommodations). But we never would have expected the amount of progress Jeff made with both our dogs, who were at very different levels of training, in just the short 2 weeks he had them. Jeff didn't just finish training them and then say, "Okay, bye. Peace out. They're all yours!" He took hours out of his evening to "train us" on how he trained them. He was patient with us as we learned how to communicate effectively with them. He practiced with us and gave us feedback on how we were doing with them. And again-- any and every question we had-- he was so patient, understanding, and helpful. He has made it clear he is with us for life despite the 2 weeks coming to an end. They have been back with us for 24 hours now at this point and here is what I have noticed: 1. I can walk them alone and not have any fear of being pulled, dragged, or feelings of frustration when we run into other dog walkers. Tonight on our walk their neighborhood "nemesis" was on the other side of the street and as soon as I gave the command Jeff taught us to give, they got in line and walked with me. When that dog passed us again and I gave the same command they sat at my feet without any protest. 2. Their recall has improved immensely in all environments. 3. Apollo is braver and tries things he was fearful of before. 4. We have left our baby gate down to separate them from our cat with little issue due to their improvement to recall. 5. Friends & neighbors have noticed the improvement & asked for Jeff's information for their dogs. 10/10 recommend. I can't express enough how thankful I am to have added Jeff to our "pack". If you want a trainer who truly cares about his work AND about your dog(s)-- Jeff at Ridgeside K9 Nashville is the call you make.