We hired Tommy a bit last minute through bark busters while visiting in town from abroad. Bark busters is a bit more expensive so we were a little wary and went back-and-forth on whether it would be worth it. Ultimately we loved the reviews of bark busters and the lifetime guarantee that they offer around the world so we decided to check it out. We were also told that Tommy has a policy where if we felt we got nothing from the first session he wouldn't take any payment but that he has never had to do this and bark busters was confident that we wouldn't want to either.
Tommy was excellent. We weren't really sure what to expect as this was the first training we've had for our dog Gilly who is a nine month old German Shepherd mix and rescue. She's been having recent barking problems that make it difficult for us to take her out in the city so we wanted to bring in a professional. We had already read books and websites and tried to do this ourselves at home to no avail.
When Tommy arrived he was immediately friendly and professional. We sat down and for the first 30 minutes he observed how we interacted with Gilly, went through what the session would look like, and reviewed the basic principles. I was amazed that within the first 10 minutes Tommy pinpointed things that we were doing that were causing problems for Gilly and preventing her from improving behavior. He pointed these things out in a nice and respectful way - showing empathy and describing his own experiences with his dog and with other clients so we didn't feel like we were just screw ups.
We then moved on to specific exercises to set a foundation for training. It was very different from a lot of the trainings that we read about which were more treat-based. While I was skeptical at first I was amazed with quick results from Tommy's methods.
We started in the house and then moved on to outdoors around more dogs and people. By the end of the session Gilly was mentally tired in a good way and already much better behaved.
Tommy and bark busters was more expensive than the other options that we saw but we would highly recommend it to anyone as we saw results.
We hired Tommy a bit last minute through bark busters while visiting in town from abroad. Bark busters is a bit more expensive so we were a little wary and went back-and-forth on whether it would be worth it. Ultimately we loved the reviews of bark busters and the lifetime guarantee that they offer around the world so we decided to check it out. We were also told that Tommy has a policy where if we felt we got nothing from the first session he wouldn't take any payment but that he has never had to do this and bark busters was confident that we wouldn't want to either.
PermalinkTommy was excellent. We weren't really sure what to expect as this was the first training we've had for our dog Gilly who is a nine month old German Shepherd mix and rescue. She's been having recent barking problems that make it difficult for us to take her out in the city so we wanted to bring in a professional. We had already read books and websites and tried to do this ourselves at home to no avail.
When Tommy arrived he was immediately friendly and professional. We sat down and for the first 30 minutes he observed how we interacted with Gilly, went through what the session would look like, and reviewed the basic principles. I was amazed that within the first 10 minutes Tommy pinpointed things that we were doing that were causing problems for Gilly and preventing her from improving behavior. He pointed these things out in a nice and respectful way - showing empathy and describing his own experiences with his dog and with other clients so we didn't feel like we were just screw ups.
We then moved on to specific exercises to set a foundation for training. It was very different from a lot of the trainings that we read about which were more treat-based. While I was skeptical at first I was amazed with quick results from Tommy's methods.
We started in the house and then moved on to outdoors around more dogs and people. By the end of the session Gilly was mentally tired in a good way and already much better behaved.
Tommy and bark busters was more expensive than the other options that we saw but we would highly recommend it to anyone as we saw results.