Testimonials

By: Sankiri Dog Training

"Charlie was an “impulse buy” on the 20th Oct. 2005, you know the dog your son just has to have, the only puppy for him. It was not a good time to acquire a dog, we were moving and renovating – Charlie was highly strung, easily excitable and suffered with separation anxiety, he hated change of any sort, it made him more nervous and demanding than usual. If he was separated from us by a window or glass door he would continually throw himself at it to get to us. If we locked him in a room where he couldn’t see us he would bark and scratch at the door till we let him out. He got excited when someone called in and jumped all over them, he constantly ignored commands and eventually he wore us into submission.

 

By the time Charlie was 12 months old he ruled the house and us, our whole life revolved around keeping him happy, much to the misery it was causing us. Finally I could not take any more, I informed my son he needed to re-house Charlie or have him professionally trained, naturally he chose the 2nd option, so Charlie was sent to “Boot Camp” for 2 weeks, and it was wonderful not having him around for that time. When he came back we were impressed, for a week or so he was fairly good then slowly the “old Charlie” started to return. When he was 18 months old, a small dog two doors up dug under the fence and attacked him, now adding to his issues, a new one; we could not walk him as he would bark and fight to get off his lead to get to another dog that was out. Apart from this being extremely embarrassing behavior for us, he would then hyper ventilate the rest of the way home.

 

We felt trapped, we loved this dog but he was making our lives a misery. When he was two, at our wits end we employed another dog trainer to come to the house and work with the three of us. We kept this up for a couple of months but saw very little improvement, so gave it away. I was convinced Charlie couldn’t be trained; I had always had dogs, but never one like Charlie. A few months later Charlie was put on “Clomicalm”, the highest daily amount you could give a dog, this actually helped to calm him slightly, which gave us some time to gather our strength. At this stage he had so many issues that needed to be dealt with, we knew we had to seek professional help again; not just having him trained, we needed to be shown how to handle him and his specific issues.

 

September 2008, we started training with Lorraine at “Sankiri”, after 2 personal training sessions with Lorraine, Charlie started to improve, she showed us how to manage him and our confidence grew, after this we joined the group Training session with Lorraine which we all enjoy. Lorraine’s method of training the owner whilst teaching the dog new commands is the only system we have found to work for us and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend her to anyone with a dog.

 

Ps: Charlie is just about weaned of his Clomicalm and believe it or not is a very intelligent, loveable and now controllable dog that enriches every minute of our lives! "

 

Megan, Alex and Charlie

 

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"Shay the Kelpie was a Christmas present, the cutest little puppy. As we had another dog, she was bought as a mate for him. He was an easy dog to train and was always well behaved. So it come as a real shock that my new puppy was the exact opposite. She cried all night, chewed everything, went to the toilet on the floor constantly even after being taken outside, and would do it right in front of your face! We couldn’t take her anywhere as she wouldn’t listen, and would play up all the time.

 

I decided after a few months she needed to have some training. I found Lorraine on the internet and immediately booked our first lesson. This is where the real fun began. As soon as the training lead and halter went on she would scratch, squeal and nip! After the first lesson I was horrified and exhausted and honestly wanted to get rid of her, as I just didn’t think we could handle her.

 

After 2 more lessons she improved dramatically and her behavior at home had been a lot better. A few weeks later she went in to the group class and loves coming to school! She is now toilet trained, has stopped chewing everything in sight and can actually go visit family and sits and behaves!Shay has now realized that she is not the dominant one in the house, that we are the boss.

 

I love Lorraine’s “tough love is good love” as I call them, training methods because they have had the most amazing results on our dog. She is now a year old, and wouldn’t give her away for the world. She is a smart and loving dog and we will continue to take her to Sankiri for a long time to come, as we both love the socializing and the new challenges every week! "

 

Luke McGuigan

 

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"After being won over by her big brown doting eyes, we soon learned that Audrey was not like other dogs.

 

We thought avoiding her fear aggression issue would make it go away but after our local vet recommended some serious alternatives, we decided to take action.

 

We did not want to see our darling little dog be lost to the green dream.

 

Medication was prescribed, however it did very little to soothe Audrey’s tension. At our wit’s end, and sensing how unhappy our dog was, we sought several opinions from various dog training schools, but we never realized how important it was to find the perfect match between dog-trainer-owner.

 

We began with a couple of one-on-one lessons not only for Lorraine (our trainer) to assess the issues, but also for Audrey to begin to learn that she had nothing to fear from strangers. We are proud to say that now we don’t fear her snapping at visitors and she can happily play with other dogs. We look forward to group training because each week we can see the progress she is making. It is like her weekly play date and she is happy to go."

 

Nekita from Mount Eliza

 

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"Before finding Sankiri, we had, at considerable expense, battled through about 12 lessons based on the reward method and still had a Jack Russell Kelpie cross dog that wouldn't walk on a lead, crouched to chase cars when on the lead, bowled us over to get in the back door first, would not come when called and greeted us with boundless "enthusiasm" when we returned home from work.

I hated going into the yard and put off taking her for walks. My shoulders and back were constantly in pain from the jarring, pulling and twisting that a walk involved. And then we found Sankiri !

Lorraine convinced us that we didn't have a bad dog just an untrained one despite our best efforts using the reward method.

We purchased a specially fitted head halter from Lorraine and by the end of our first lesson with her Stella would sit and stay, walk on the lead next to us without pulling and would come when called.

We fell in love with our dog all over again and had the confidence to continue with Lorraine's method of training to stop any other unwanted behaviour. Stella is now a year old and is a delightful pet. I cannot thank Lorraine enough. If we had not found her when we did, I don't think we would have kept Stella."

 

Karen and Gabby