Client Success Stories That Show Positive Reinforcement Based Dog Training Works

What family wouldn’t want a puppy for their kids? With a three and a one-year-old at home we knew we wanted a dog but we had forgotten how difficult it was to introduce a puppy to a family with children.

Eileen came over and was a huge help from the moment she stepped in the door. Her expertise not only with dogs but also with children helped us make Walter a well-behaved part of the family in just a few short weeks.

Eileen worked around my schedule and adapted each lesson to suit my needs. She truly understands dogs and I don’t know what we would have done without her help. In addition, Eileen has a wonderful personality and is so easy to talk to which really made training such a smooth and enjoyable process. Thank you, thank you Eileen! Walter wouldn’t be the pup he is without you!

From my first phone conversation with Eileen, I was sure we had found the trainer we had been searching for. Unlike other trainers, Eileen doesn’t have a one-size-fits all approach. While there are easier basic commands to start with when you’re training, our dogs needed the most help walking nicely on a leash. They loved their long walks but they excelled at pulling, usually in opposite directions. We were so happy that Eileen agreed to tackle leash training first. Maggie and Molly get along great but these two rescues have very different personalities, fears, strengths and weaknesses. Without batting an eye, Eileen recognized this and helped us teach both our girls at the same time.

After learning the basic commands, we asked Eileen to teach Maggie and Molly some fun tricks to show off to our friends and some agility for a little extra fun. Eileen was happy to teach whatever we wanted and always found a way to bring out the best in our girls.

The love Eileen has for dogs shows and it inspired us and our dogs to succeed and return her love. There are lots of dog trainers and lots of approaches to dog training. When we found Eileen Haley and Second Chance Dog Training, we found the perfect match for our girls and for us. We highly recommend her.

Baci was 8 weeks old when she joined our family. She was play biting when she got excited and would bark when she wanted attention. Her puppy antics would cause Bella, one of our other three dogs, to react. After a week of chaos, we called Eileen.

Eileen not only helped us train Baci, she simulated the situations we found difficult and showed us how to get all of our dogs to respond the way we wanted. Bella and Baci are best friends now! We are so glad we decided to call Eileen. We learned more than we ever expected and couldn’t be happier with the results.

When we adopted our rescue puppy Tania, Eileen was the first person I thought of when we were looking for a trainer. Ten years prior, she helped us train our newly adopted 5-year-old rescue beagle Star. We always remembered how she helped us teach Star how to properly walk on a leash, understand commands and adjust to a new home after living in a research lab the first five years of her life. Star lived to be a happy, loving, 15-year-old dog and we are so thankful to Eileen for helping us get her started on her life at home.

Now we have Tania and thanks to Eileen, she knows sit, down, stay, come and walks properly on a leash all due to Eileen's positive reinforcement techniques. Eileen helps us in our home, which is great because Tania is being trained in her own environment. Our entire family looks forward to training sessions with Eileen! She is warm and caring and Tania absolutely loves her. Eileen is also a great listener and helps us with any challenges that arise with a new puppy.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Eileen for helping us create a wonderful home environment first for Star and now for Tania. We recently went on a trip to Rhode Island, and people constantly stopped us saying how sweet and well behaved Tania was -- even on an hour ferry ride! Eileen is A++.

I have used Eileen for two dogs! My last dog, Dallas, was adopted at 6 weeks old. She was extremely difficult to train until Eileen came to help me. Hiring her was the best thing I ever did. Dallas turned out to be a wonderful dog and I heavily contribute that to Eileen's training style and methods. She gets to know each of her clients and their dogs personally. Eileen uses positive reinforcement and trains with absolute love.

I can always rely on Eileen and call her whenever I need advice. When I was considering adopting my new puppy Marley, she relieved my mind and assured me that I was doing the right thing. She is an amazing listener and helped me more than she will ever realize. She’s never judged anything I've done and if something I am doing needs adjusting, she explains everything in a way that I can understand. Her handouts alone are incredible.

Eileen worked with Marley for two hours and refreshed my memory about basic training and puppy behavior. Now we are both doing incredibly well! I swear by Eileen's training and think she is the most wonderful dog trainer out there. I have always had a positive experience and think the world of her (and so does my dog!). If you are looking for an understanding, kind, dog-loving trainer, Eileen is the one to use!

As a first time dog owner, I was overwhelmed when I brought home my new puppy Tosca. Luckily I found the right trainer to help me. Eileen patiently taught me about puppy behavior and made each lesson fun.

Tosca is now so well behaved she even comes to work with me. She impresses everyone with her obedience and dazzles them with her tricks. I highly recommend Eileen. She not only train dogs . . . . she creates best friends!

Eileen helped us train our first dog Shea, a Cockerpoo, when he was a puppy. Shea became a wonderful dog. He was a happy member of our family for over 14 years. When we got our second puppy Levi, an Australian Labradoodle, we were expecting the same calm temperament.

Instead Levi was wildly rambunctious. His nipping was intense, he’d constantly steal things and he would snap at us when we tried to put his collar on. There were definitely difficult times, tears and frustration. Thankfully Eileen was always available and eager to help. She wanted us to be happy! Eileen trained Levi and gave us the tools to make his good behavior permanent. We are so glad that we persevered. Now we are in love with Levi!

I adopted Hera when she was 20 months old. She is a beautiful, 85 lb American Bulldog. Though Hera has a good heart, her uncertainty around strangers and tendency to be easily frightened made her very dangerous at times. After first meeting Eileen, I was very impressed with her ability to interact with my dog. In only a few weeks, the changes in Hera’s behavior were astonishing. Through our work, she became a more social, confident, and obedient Bulldog.

The training Eileen provided came into use months after our sessions ended. One afternoon, the door to my house was accidentally left open, and Hera decided to take herself for a walk. By the time I realized she was gone, she was several blocks away.

Using the “recall” command taught to us by Eileen, she came sprinting home. That moment alone was worth the training because knowing that command might have saved Hera’s life.

When our Golden Retriever, Mary Jane, was 10 months old we were at the end of our rope with the nipping and jumping. I looked on the internet, checked with Westwood Pets and talked to people at the dog park. The finger pointed in the same direction every time. It was Eileen Haley. Thank goodness I called.

Eileen is extremely professional and her love for dogs is endless. From the first day she came to our home to work with us, I couldn’t believe how smart our dog really was!  Whenever we have company over now, we love to show off her commands.

We truly cannot say enough about Eileen’s abilities, professionalism and respect for all breeds. In addition to being so dog loving, she has a great rapport with people too! It turns out we humans need some training as well in order to understand man’s best friend. When your trainer is on the floor snuggling with your dog, you know you made the right choice!! Maybe our dog is just THAT lovable but I have a feeling it goes both ways! We could never thank Eileen enough for what she did for us.

I interviewed a number of dog trainers before I found Eileen and I instinctively knew she'd be the right person to help me train Hugo, my Westie. Eileen’s attitude and approach to training is exactly what I was looking for.

She doesn't apply a cookie-cutter training program and expect your dog to conform. Instead, she really gets to know your dog and trains in a way that takes advantage of that understanding.

Hugo wasn't even aware that he was being 'trained' and he looked forward to every visit with "Aunt Eileen”. The whole process was fun, engaging, relaxed and above all, very effective. I would recommend Eileen to anyone who wants to bridge the communication gap with the dog they love.

I met Eileen Haley at the local animal shelter where I volunteer. They had invited Second Chance Dog Training to teach us how to train the shelter dogs. I was amazed at how the dogs responded to Eileen in such a short time. Even dogs that had been labeled “virtually impossible to walk” were walking nicely on a leash. Both dog and walker were happy.

I decided her method of training might be worth a try at home with my own ‘pack of dogs’. At that time, I had 2 adult Labs and 2 shepherd mix puppies. Since my male Lab had a bad experience with a trainer in the past, I was a nervous about how he would react but since she only uses positive reinforcement, he loved it. We all did. Having her come to our home allowed her to see how the dogs behaved in their own environment.

By graduation, I had a totally different way of thinking about dogs and a better way to communicate with them. About five months after graduation, I adopted a puppy that had been badly abused. With Eileen’s guidance, my other 4 dogs accepted her and we are all very happy together. I always recommend Eileen to people who want to improve their relationship with their dog.

Tucker, my Lab/Great Dane mix, was adopted at 18 months from an area shelter as a playmate for my 2-year-old Chocolate Lab, Molly. He was a stray that had spent 7 months at the shelter with little opportunity for socialization or training. I immediately started him in traditional obedience classes where he responded with fear and resistance to collar “corrections”. He was aggressive towards other dogs, except Molly, with barking and lunging.

Over the next couple of months, Tucker’s aggression escalated to people, he started destroying the house and began guarding a corner of the sofa as his own. Molly responded by becoming protective of me and attacking Tucker. It was obvious that traditional training methods were not working and, I believe, they were making the situation worse because reaching for his collar now caused him to turn and bite. I was afraid of him and concerned for Molly’s safety.  

Then I found Eileen at Second Chance Dog Training and started using her positive reinforcement based training. Both dogs were taught all of the obedience commands using praise and treats. Tucker was reinforced as the dominant dog (below me) to reduce the fights that were occurring between Molly and Tucker. Molly and Tucker’s relationship has improved and they spend their days playing and sleeping.

Within two months, I was able to take Tucker to a dog-filled park and walk along the trails with a happy dog that no longer felt the need to lunge at every dog he saw. He can even meet and greet some dogs. I have become confident in my ability to work with Tucker and handle him in various situations. He loves my attention, is eager to please, sits whenever he isn’t sure what to do and allows me to hold him at the collar to remove things from his mouth. I believe Eileen and the positive training methods literally saved Tucker’s life because, without her, I would have been unable to keep him for fear he would eventually hurt someone.

When we first brought our dog Lucky (a Jindo) home from the shelter, he was unbelievably calm, he got along fine with our cats, and he never even barked. However, as the weeks went on, he became more and more possessive of us and our home. It began with mouthiness and mounting but soon escalated to the point where it was “fangs and foam” every time somebody came to the door or he saw another animal while out walking.

We tried everything from choke collars to a no-pull harness to get him to behave better on walks, but any time he saw another animal it was all you could do to hold him back. After two incidents with other dogs, one that Lucky bit while out for a walk and one where I got bit by the other dog while walking Lucky, we decided we needed help immediately, if not sooner. One of the shelter employees suggested Second Chance Dog Training. At first we were very skeptical that training would make that much difference. If I knew then what I know now, well, all I can say to anyone interested in obedience lessons for their dog is: call Eileen and sign up immediately!

From the very first lesson we noticed a difference. Lucky picked up every command and hand signal within one lesson from being shown. I have never seen anything like it. From the personal attention, ability to work around our schedule, and the care given to Lucky with each and every session Eileen Haley was just incredible. We even ran into two of her former students at the groomer, and they were amazed when we told them Lucky hadn’t even graduated yet. He had three more lessons to go. He was so well-behaved they thought he had completed the program. Thank you so much, Eileen, for everything you have done for us!

We would like to thank Eileen for all she has taught us and our Jack Russell Terrier, Bella. We learned a lot from her and had a great time. After each session, we could not wait until the next. We still keep in touch with her whenever we need advice or just to share something new we’ve been able to teach Bella.

Eileen really wants you to succeed and helps you every step of the way. We will be meeting with her in the future to learn some advanced work and tricks. We’ve recommended Eileen to all our family and friends.

I adopted my American Staffordshire Terrier, Asia, when she was about 9 months old. She is a very smart and friendly dog that listens very well. I never had a serious problem before. It wasn't until she was 2 years old when she decided that is would be a lot of fun to start chasing bicyclists and rollerbladers in the park. Being that she is in the pit bull family, I decided that this behavior needed to be corrected. I called around to a few dog trainers and happened to call Eileen for some information. I was very impressed by her immediately and liked the methods she had explained to me.

At the lesson, I was very happy to see how knowledgeable Eileen was and how well she interacted with Asia. I was even more impressed to see how her methods really do work and that she taught ME how to work with Asia. We worked on Asia's intrigue with "things on wheels" and she even taught us some basic commands. Asia is now doing very well. I really liked Eileen's method of positive reinforcement to fix my dog's behavior problem. I will be sure to call on her again if her services are needed. You know that this is a person that truly loves dogs.