Nothing to Bark At

The vet recommended a trainer for Gabe when I was there last week. She hadn’t used him personally, but was interested in hearing what I had to say if I did choose to use him.

I visited the website and found it to be a franchise company with branches in 8 countries and across the nation. Training came with a lifetime guarantee and that was applicable to any location you moved to as well.

I called the local guy and we talked for several minutes about Gabe and about the problem I was having with him (leash aggression). He asked me a lot of questions related and unrelated to the problem to get a general feel for Gabe’s personality and demeanor. Does he bark at the doorbell? (I dismantled the doorbell when the kids downstairs damaged it). Does he jump on people when they come into the home? (No one ever comes into my house except my ex husband and Gabe knows him.) Does he steal your shoes? (No, but we keep them in the closet.) Does he counter-surf, stealing things off the counter? (Um, no, but I nearly beat the tar out of him the one time he tried that as a puppy so I doubt it’s likely to happen again.) Does he tug on the leash when you walk? (No, but we’ve used a choker, then a prong choker, then an elastic choker, and now a Halti collar to curb pulling.) He and I both agreed that it sounded like Gabe is a pretty well socialized, balanced, happy dog without many issues, but that the problems we have out walking are something that should be addressed through training.

So then he elaborates about the lifetime guarantee for training and goes on to say that the first visit is usually 2-3 hours long and then he would come back as many times as necessary for that problem or any other problem that I ever have with Gabe.

My mind starts ticking away. Hmm…so it’s a flat, one-time rate that will last me the lifetime of my dog, how much is this gonna set me back?

Five.Hundred.Dollars.

Yeah, well, dude, let me call ya back…..

So I go back to the website and I read articles from various newspapers about local franchise openings and such and I try to read between the lines about the actual training that they do to figure out if it’s something that I think would warrant Five.Hundred.Dollars.

One of the articles read:

“Tycocki explained what we were going to do. When the dog, at the moment it was Zoe, does something bad, you growl Bahhh! at it. Again, I wanted to laugh, but I was willing to believe anything because my puppy had driven me to desperation. Zoe began to lick my hand, and Scott quickly growled BAHHH! It worked. Her ears were back. She stopped. She was looking right at Scott. ‘This is good,’ Tycocki said, ‘exactly what you want. She’s submissive and completely paying attention.’”

I read several other articles just to be sure I was getting this right. This company is all about communicating to your dog as your dog’s mother would have trained him, to use dog language to train your dog, not treats or punishment.


To be perfectly clear then, this company wants me to pay Five.Hundred.Dollars to teach me how to GROWL at my dog.

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!


Just saved myself Five.Hundred.Smackaroos.