Nearly twelve years ago we brought our first “baby” home just after our honeymoon. She was an adorable Scottish Terrier and we loved her to pieces. When she was old enough we began looking around at the training options (for us and for her) and were told by more than one person that “you can’t train a terrier!” Then we found Teah Anders and she scoffed at such a remark. She has trained all types of terriers and vowed that our Scottie would be easy to train. Two training sessions later we had a reasonably well-trained Scottie Dog. It was really only our training that was rough around the edges.
Gentle Touch Pet Training
1886 Deer Canyon Road
Arroyo Grande, CA 93420
This year Santa brought us a Miniature Australian Shepherd. While she is very smart and relatively easy to train by comparison she is HIGH energy and needs guidance. So we found ourselves back with Teah and her helpful knowledgeable staff and amazing facility in a specially designed barn on her property. She has a wealth of information and experience from decades of training and the success of her methods are apparent after the first week. We are in the second round of puppy training and look forward to the agility class with Talley the Aussie.
The mission statement on the Gentle Touch Pet Training web site states that they are “Dedicated to helping people live a happier life with their dogs and helping dogs to live happier lives with their people.” This is clear in everything they do during the Gentle Touch classes and is outlined in Teah’s book “Click ‘N Connect.” The training system is so user-friendly that we had our son who is 7 take it with us and he immediately understood the concepts taught in class and could follow through with them at home. There were many other children in the class as well — which is a great idea to learn the training cues as a family and be able to roll them out consistently. The Gentle Touch trainers are well divided depending on the number of class participants keeping the puppy chaos to a minimum. It turns out to be a positive, rewarding and successful experience in a safe, clean environment even if your puppy has not finished their vaccinations.
Although we have been fortunate to never have had an adult dog with behavior issues, Teah and her trainers can address those as well in group or individual formats. To make it simple Teah offers the training tools you need — nose sticks, treat bags, recommended toys etc. in her retail room so if you forgot or like what she uses better you can get it right then and there.
If you are too far away to take one of her awesome classes I recommend purchasing the books and watching as many of the training videos as you can on her site www.clicknconnect.com. The positive reinforcement psychology behind this form of training has proven successful with our family multiple times and with dozens of our friends and acquaintances. I highly recommend Gentle Touch for your dog and your family!