I hired Roger to do basic obedience training with my dog Maggie. She is a mixed breed lab/pitbull who I adopted from the Animal League as a puppy. Maggie is very intelligent but extremely stubborn and wanted to be the pack leader in my house! Roger immediately assessed the situation and gave me the training that I needed to follow through with her home training. I learned that I was enabling her to take the lead versus me. I can truly state that Roger gave me the foundation to continue with her training and I still use his techniques today. I want to mention that when I told Roger that my 94 year old mother who uses a walker was going to visit me over the Thanksgiving holiday, he came up with the idea that he would use a friend with a walker and give Maggie some special training. My mother visited for 2 1/2 weeks and Maggie and Mom were perfect together. I was so relieved and so was Mom! I have Roger to thank for this and thinking outside the box in her training. I would highly recommend Roger for any of your training needs. Kathy S. |
Roger shares a story about a special dog: Jhan L. called and asked me if I thought we could train a little schnauzer mix who was a paraplegic. She went on to tell me the story of how she acquired Lulis (pronounced "Loo-leese") from a couple in Mexico who rescued her from certain death. Lulis had been hit with a baseball bat by a group of children and left to die. I told Jhan that I wanted to evaluate Lulis before I made any commitment to train her. So I went to Jhan's house in Elephant Head and met Lulis. What immediately struck me was that Lulis wore a diaper, had no use of her back legs, and had to drag them behind her when she was not hooked up to her wheels. The next thing that struck me was that Lulis did not seem to have any hard feelings toward humans for her injury. She is an extremely happy and loving little dog. Lulis also runs around and is able to keep up with Jhan's and NJ's other dog, a schnauzer named Lily. From my viewpoint, Lulis did not know or even care she was a paraplegic. I told Jhan, yes, I would do my best to train Lulis and we began formal obedience training. My doubts vanished as Lulis rose to the occasion and demonstrated how intelligent she was and how ready she was to learn. During our four private training sessions, I began to feel very inspired by this little dog's incredible fortitude. She can melt the hardest of hearts in an instant. Lulis progressed so fast with her training that she was soon ready to take the Canine Good Citizen test - a test that all service and therapy dogs must take and pass. I conducted the test at La Posada Java and Lulis passed with flying colors. She is now in the process of becoming a therapy dog. I know she will be a wonderful inspiration to people who have lost the use of their limbs. She will soon be going into hospitals and nursing homes to bring smiles and comfort to those who may just benefit from a few minutes with this amazing dog. August 2015 See below for pictures of Lulis with her specialized equipment. |
The Animal League of Green Valley will pay for half of your training with us for any dog adopted from their organization. |
My wife and I met Roger and Helaine in April 2017. Roger provided dog training and Helaine did some dog sitting for us while we spent a month in Green Valley, AZ. We have two young chihuahua mixed dogs that came from a rescue. The dogs had some basic obedience training but we needed some more help with them. We did four 1 hour sessions with Roger. Roger met with us and did a complete interview to learn about us as dog owners and about our dogs. We set a plan to cover basic obedience as well as some new commands such as "leave it," "go to your spot," and how to deal with meeting other dogs. We learned from Roger the importance of socializing our dogs with both humans and other dogs. Our dogs would go a little crazy when encountering other dogs while on a walk. Roger pointed out that this was leash frustration and not aggression. Roger pointed out the importance of consistency and the need to continually train with the dogs to reinforce what they learned. It was amazing to see how the dogs responded to what we all learned from Roger. We saw progress each week. We now feed confident that we can control our dogs while out walking or at the dog park. The dogs respond better to basic obedience commands. Helaine did a great job of dog sitting. She got the dogs out for walks when she came to check on them and updated us via text messages as well. We would recommend Roger and Helaine. Great job!! Joel S. |