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“Too set in their own training method”

written by joyful12 on 27/11/2014

If Barkbusters had had the decency to reply to my complaint I would not be posting this.
However as they have not I will share my comments with other.

As others have noted, some of the basic discipline commands may work (by scaring the hell out of your dog mostly) any flexibility for dealing with aggression/fear based issues is non existent.

We were told that our timid dog was non attentive towards us and overprotective and that we must break this by marching up and down the street until the dog focused on us and nothing else.
We wanted the trainer to address our dogs issues with other dogs outside the house and went to a local park with the trainer, but after a couple of weeks of following the trainers fear based
techniques, our dog had become so scared and confused that it actually bit another dog whilst under the trainer’s control.

The trainer then told us that our dog was aggressive towards other dogs and had a fear of other dogs and must be kept on a muzzle, continue the discipline program indoors and the dogs behaviour outside will eventually be fine.

Horrified at the thought of having to walk around with our dog permanently muzzled we contacted our original trainer and found that he had a group walk with some 5 - 8 dogs each Monday at a local park and we could also book a one to one training session at the same time.

My wife joined him, two other owners and about ten assorted dogs for a two hour walk in the park. Our dog was on a lead the whole time, perfectly happy, not lunging, snarling or biting the other dogs. He allowed, with guidance, plenty of sniffing and thoroughly enjoyed a very
muddy walk.

Clearly the Barkbuster’s method of training simply does not suit al dogs and it is a pity that the company fails to recognise this and enforce a non refundable payment regime.