Henry, who just turned one, is the third golden retriever that we have had in our family. We wanted to make sure we would have a super well-trained dog – our other two were pretty good but they were leash-pullers all through their lives and had other “light” behaviours that we just didn’t want to have to live with this time. We read the books, watched the videos, used the clicker, bought bag after bag after bag of treats and made baby-step progress. We might have continued on this way (probably never reaching “super well-trained” status😀) except for two things. First, we were invited away one weekend a month or so ago but couldn’t go because we had no one we could trust him with because of his strong leash pulling especially when he would see another dog – we were afraid someone would get hurt as well as the fact that walking him was just not a fun experience (he wasn’t aggressive towards other dogs, just 100% determined to get to go visit them).

The bigger issue was that he had had three episodes of resource guarding where he snapped at us – we didn’t want to have a dog that we were nervous about having anyone around, in particular young children. We had our first meeting with Ted and Amy after a sleepless night worrying that maybe Henry and we were not a good match. Wow, what a relief to hear their confidence that all our concerns could be addressed. We were amazed at the learning he had after less than 10 minutes with Ted. Then we had our four sessions with Amy. And things kept getting better and better. We can play ball with him and he will actually bring the ball back and drop it instead of running away and growling if we try to get it from him. We recently started introducing him to off-leash walks in places where there aren’t a lot of other people or dogs – we thought he was going to get whiplash from how quickly he turned and came when we called him, often without even having to “remind” him with the collar! Our evening witching hour consisting of constantly grabbing pillows and blankets and napkins has vanished.

People can come to our door and not get attacked with kindness (he was never reactive – he just loved everyone way too much). We don’t worry anymore about him getting something in his mouth and not letting it go or growling at us. Like someone else said, we’re looking forward to him progressing to the point where he doesn’t need to wear the e-collar – but we’ll be patient! We’ve gone to our first group class and loved the training ideas we took from that. Looking forward to more of those. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Ted and Amy to anyone who wants to have a well-trained and trustworthy dog – you don’t need to have major concerns with a dog being reactive, aggressive or anxious to benefit from Mango Dogs’ training (although if you do, from reading all the other reviews, they’d be the ones to go to).. Thank you so much!

Lynn, Don and Henry.