The Dog Behaviorist NYC

Dominik was a 10/10 trainer. I found him before I got my 9 week old puppy and started working with him a couple weeks after. If anyone has had a puppy, you understand how overwhelming and daunting the process can be. Dominik entered the situation calm but also assertive, and gave me the confidence and tools I needed. In addition to the private sessions, he was always available by phone with any questions and was great at recommending training products. While nowhere near perfect, my dog has made a tremendous improvement. She is more confident and our relationship has drastically improved. Her recall is at a great place and general obedience (sit, stay, leave it) is consistently good. I can't recommend Dominik enough!

We started working with Dominik when we first got our bernedoodle puppy at 10 weeks old. I’m honestly not sure what we would have done without him. During the training sessions he taught our puppy in 60 min what would have taken us weeks/months to try and do. He took time to understand both mine and my fiancé’s needs and of course our puppy’s needs and thoughtfully created a training schedule from there. After each session there was a clear and noticeable change in our pup - to the point where we often get stopped on the street and people ask who our trainer is. Dominik is knowledgeable, professional, and also respectful of all Covid-19 protocols throughout this time. On top of the in-person sessions, Dominik never hesitated to respond to questions we had when we weren’t training. If you’re looking for a trainer or someone to trust with your pup - I’d highly recco Dominik. And our puppy Theo is obsessed with him too!

I had the opportunity to work with Dominick over the last 3 months, and when I say opportunity, I mean it. Dominick is there to train *you*, and if you're ready to work on yourself, your dog will follow. Dominick works with you on some of the toughest challenges you can face with a dog, and his methods are effective. When I told him about my dog's separation anxiety, he broke the issue down into much more easily-addressed building blocks involving authority, boredom, comfort, and solitude. Those are the things we worked on -- not the separation anxiety itself -- and that work reduced the anxiety and improved a lot of other behaviors. I'd tried two trainers before, and with each of them, I felt both lectured to and disempowered. There's no judgement with Dominick, and no sense that he just has an alpha energy that dogs respond to. It's instead calmness and specific techniques that had an immediate effect. Our last session together was definitely a sad one: my pup really loves Dominick! If you're reading this review, it means you need help and love your dog enough to seek it out. I'd go ahead and book a consult with Dominick and see the effect yourself.

Sorry this is long but I don't usually leave reviews and I just have to talk about our amazing experience with Dominik. My partner and I adopted Dusty--a very traumatized, 4 year old cattle dog with a limp--this summer, and it was clear early on that we needed a professional to help him. Dusty definitely had a ROUGH start, with a spinal injury and serious reactivity around cars or even the expectation of the sound of cars (not ideal for a Brooklyn boy!) He would be TERRIFIED on walks, didn't seem to know any obedience, and possibly even lacked basic socialization. So we didn't exactly have high sky-high hopes for the kind of dog he could become: If we could get Dusty to tell us when he had to go outside and maybe hang out with us in the living room instead of hiding in his crate, that would have been fine! Low bar. Enter: Dominik. From early on, we knew that he had the kind of expertise that could really tackle our dog's particular problems (and there were...many problems). He really broke down the barriers we'd faced to training Dusty by pinpointing where certain issues were stemming from to get to the underlying cause of them, and then teaching him the skills that would stick. He also taught us how to redirect Dusty's fear so that he could trust us enough to ignore his own fear triggers. Crucially, Dominik made my partner and I feel less hopeless and more confident when it came to training our dog. We purchased a pack of three sessions, and after every single hour spent with Dominik, we'd say to each other, "Wow, really did not realize Dusty could do that!" Now, Dusty is SO different from the version of himself we first adopted. He is doing better and better on walks every week, he has a big repertoire of tricks, he's happy and excited to go new places. His reactivity is so minimal now--something I just never thought would happen. Dominik helped Dusty (and his owners!) gain a much better quality of life. If you have a dog who needs a good foundation for training, or who has reactivity issues that you just do not know how to deal with, I recommend Dominik so highly.