Two Paws Up Dog Training

Stephanie is absolutely wonderful, and we had a very good experience with her private reactivity training sessions. Our dog, Gouda, is very reactive to other dogs, and it was definitely becoming a problem. Stephanie was upfront and honest at the beginning, noting that it would take some time for our dog to make significant progress. We had 12-13 sessions which started at home and eventually progressed into training at the Paws Up center. She gave us tips and homework, and little by little Gouda was seriously improving! It was a lot of work and patience, but everyone has noticed a huge difference in his temperament and listening skills. He can now be distracted and ACTUALLY LISTEN during walks. Before the sessions, we had to pick him up when a dog was anywhere in sight, as he would absolutely lose his mind. I’m really proud of our little guy, and we’re very thankful for Stephanie’s help. I just wanted to add that she is very easy to work with too! She worked around our schedules, sent us detailed emails after every session, and was very understanding if we had to reschedule a session. Gouda was always excited to see her as well, which obviously made the experience even better. Thanks, Stephanie!

To anyone with a very reactive puppy or dog considering taking classes through Two Paws Up to solve this issue, I strongly suggest you go a different direction. We started taking classes in general for obedience in November of 2023, then moved on to trying three different reactivity-related classes through them, and unfortunately the only class that we had a decent experience with was the obedience related ones. For context, we have a very high energy, working line dog breed that struggled with on-leash reactivity to dogs, people, and anything moving. This is due to her high-prey drive and the frustration that being on the leash causes her. We, as first time dog owners, thought that an all-positive training approach was appealing and sounded like something that we liked and would work. We enrolled in three reactivity classes, two being very similar to each other and one being a drop off class. The first class, we honestly barely passed because it was a room with three other dogs only separated by barriers. After that class, Two Paws Up recommended that we move on to the next level of class. We joined that class and only made it a day because it was an open room with six dogs, while using completely unhelpful “management” techniques that I will get more into later. The last class we took was the drop off course, two times a week for four weeks. This was the class that ended up making her behave worse, and I honestly have no idea how they managed to do that. After each class, we were advised to move on to the next level, having to spend more and more money for little-to-no improvement. After taking those classes, we communicated to the owner, Stephanie, that the classes did not help her and rather made her reactivity worse. We communicated that our dog needed a more structured, balanced training program that communicated what we wanted from her. Then, she continued to insult the two of us as dog parents, accused us of moving into “punishment-based training”, and telling us that we did not commit enough to the training program. This was not the case, but the email thread from the owner continued to be incredibly unprofessional and accusatory, despite my polite statement in the first emails that simply tried to communicate our problems with the program. For anyone who is looking into the reactivity programs, just know that every single class has the same commands and the same management methods that do not work, and the owner will advise you to “keep your windows closed to avoid triggers, don’t go on walks in populated areas”, and more instead of solving the issue that we paid them to fix. They use “find it”, and throw food on the ground for the dog to be distracted, but does not offer anything to counteract the reason for the reactivity. They say “this way!” to the dog and go a different direction also as a distraction, rather than solving the dog’s issue and lack of confidence with triggers. Every single command they use is food-based with no other more reliable method. If your dog is not food-motivated, I would bet that they would have an incredibly difficult time making any changes to your dog’s behavior. It is truly unfortunate that I had to write this, waste thousands of dollars of my money, and end up with a dog whose reactivity got worse despite our commitment to the training. I do not write bad reviews because I don’t think they are worth it, but I am only writing this in hopes that dog owners with high-energy breeds with the same issue do not make the same mistake that I did.