Our family adopted our Shepherd/Lab Mix dog, Cooper, at 8 weeks old from a rescue that placed new litters of puppies. We have 2 young boys, ages 7and 10, and thought this would be the perfect time to get a puppy to grow up along with them. Fast forward 7 months and we had an energetic, strong-willed adolescent dog who’s unwanted behaviors were being reinforced by 2 energetic, strong-willed little boys…we needed help!!
So, I contacted Silke at Hero Canine Counseling for assistance with training Cooper and helping our family learn how to properly handle our new addition. We set up the Teen Dog Package for Cooper that included 4 in-home sessions. Silke was very flexible in setting up our sessions to accommodate our family’s busy schedule.
We learned so much from Silke during our 4 sessions! She was amazing with handling Cooper and so patient with teaching our boys. She helped us to understand Cooper’s behaviors and gave us so many tools for training and adjusting some of the things we were doing incorrectly. We worked on keeping Cooper from jumping up on people and unwanted chewing and mouthing. Techniques to keep Cooper from running out the door and to train him to walk properly beside side us on his leash. We also covered common commands, such as sit and stay, come, take it, let’s go. She recapped each session in a follow up email and gave us so many resources to refer to. We are still a work in progress but we see improvements every day and have learned the biggest lesson is consistency!
We would highly recommend Hero Canine Counseling to any one that is looking for tools for training their dog or needs help handling unwanted behaviors. Silke has so much knowledge to share and is a pleasure to work with. Our only regret is that we didn’t contact her sooner!! -- Lori Bower, Danville, PA
I came to Silke for desperate help when my 6 year old rescue Australian Cattle/Jack Russel started to become unpredictably aggressive. We spent 4 sessions working on impulse control, but I knew she was a dog whisperer after just the 1st session!
I am now much more comfortable taking my dog on walks around the neighborhood with my one year old, and keeping my dog out in the living room during play dates! He listens to me like he never listened before and he is much happier too (a lot more play/cuddle/treat time with momma since the baby was born!). Our friends have noticed a huge change in behavior and have only wonderful things to say now. Thank you so much Silke!! -- Kristen Zhang with Bo, Danville, PA
We recently brought a new mini Golden Doodle puppy into our family of seven. With five children and a very busy schedule, we realized we needed to seek some direction in training our exuberant, wiggly puppy to make sure we set her on the right course towards becoming a well-behaved and safe member of our family. HeRo's in-home Puppy Starter Package was just what we needed. The sessions were customized to our needs, and being able to train right in our own home and yard was invaluable. Silke addressed our questions about our puppy's behaviors including jumping on the kids, mouthing, pulling on the leash, and getting along with other dogs. Because our puppy was showing some signs of bullying towards my mother's dog, Silke even did a session at my mom's home to work on those behaviors with both dogs. The "field trip" session at a local store offered the chance for our puppy to practice her new skills in an unfamiliar environment with many distractions. Silke was creative and thoughtful in involving our five kids in the training and in giving us suggestions of how to teach them to work with our puppy. The handouts, websites and resources she provided through the trainings were excellent. Overall, we found Silke to be knowledgeable, professional, thorough, and gracious. We hope to enroll our puppy in a group class at HeRo Canine Consulting sometime soon. -- Tami Gabrielsen and Quincy, Danville, PA