Hazel

We required dog boarding services for our 7 month old puppy, Hazel. We were referred to Diane by our dog trainer. And we couldn’t have been more thrilled! It was our very first boarding experience, so we were a little nervous leaving our pup. But Diane put us at ease throughout the entire boarding experience. She provided updates throughout the entire week about Hazel, including pictures and videos of our girl! Knowing that Hazel was having a wonderful time and was being so well cared for, gave us the comfort we were looking for. Diane is lovely and treats every animal like her own! We cannot recommend her and her services enough! 

Lou

Diane’s training positive training methods have been perfect for our rescue dog Lou. She’s helped us teach Lou the basics, as well as working on her leash reactivity, and over excitement and overwhelm at running into other dogs. She’s also been wonderful as we have begun to break down some of the more complex skills that we need her to learn as we hope that she will become an owner trained service dog. Diane’s positive and flexible training style works really well, both in person and via video call. She gives clear instructions, along with explaining the theory of how the training sequence works, which makes it really easy to implement. She is mindful of not giving us more than we can manage to implement between sessions. She is also adept at making adjustments to training tasks to work with our needs as disabled pet owners (such as the intricacies of training a dog who was not leash trained to walk well with us in our wheelchairs), as well as to meet Lou where she is at so as not to result in frustration. Diane also has lots of great suggestions for how to entertain a high energy, intelligent dog at home without breaking the bank, which has been a huge help with Lou. We would highly recommend Diane for dog training, particularly if you need to work remotely, or if you are looking to train more than the basics and need a trainer who can think outside the box.

– Shay & Paulina

Charlie 

I could write a novel about all the reasons why you should choose Diane but I’ll try to keep it short 🙂 

My husband and I got our miniature poodle, Charlie, when he was 7 months and he had some struggles with mild separation anxiety, hyper-arousal, reactivity and basic obedience. We had done one on one sessions with Diane’s mentor, Stephanie, and Diane had shadowed a couple sessions. We were seeing progress but we overwhelmed with all the training and desperately needed a break. It was important to me that only positive reinforcement training was used and, unfortunately, that’s hard to find in board & trains. Luckily, Diane was highly recommended and had availability to take Charlie into her home for 3 weeks. Diane sent us frequent updates during the board and train and at the end of it she provided us with training and detailed notes on how to continue the amazing progress that was made. We continued doing some private sessions with Diane and she was great at providing support between sessions when needed. Charlie has grown into a more calm, well-rounded, stress-free dog, and that wouldn’t have happened without Diane. We haven’t had to do any sessions lately but if anything ever comes up, she is our person.

– Brittany

Max 

We started working with Diane when our cockapoo Max started to develop reactivity towards other dogs at about 5 months old, and she has been absolutely wonderful. We were specifically looking for a trainer who specializes in science-based force-free methods. Coming from a previous experience with a balanced trainer whose repertoire mainly consisted of force-based corrections and dominance, we were immediately impressed with Diane: after making a point of visiting our home to thoroughly assess Max’s behavior in his usual environment, she took the time to help us understand what was behind his reactions, and walked us through management and redirection- and mitigation-based techniques and exercises we could use to help him deal with his emotions. We quickly began to see some positive changes in Max, and knew right away that we’d found the right trainer for him. With Diane’s support, we built Max’s confidence in us as his people and in his environment using pattern-based games, slow and deliberate counter-conditioning and caring for his hyper-vigilant nervous system through rest days and decompression. Plus, through our sessions together, it quickly became obvious that Max just adores Diane, and clearly considers her to be one of his favorite people.

This relationship has also been invaluable for the times we have needed to board Max: as a very people-focused (i.e. clingy) dog, we were initially worried that being away from us would be hard for Max, so the fact that boarding him with Diane is basically like sending him to stay with family has given us enormous peace of mind. Max has now boarded with Diane several times, and has had the best time on each stay — in fact, he now actively pulls us towards her place whenever he recognizes that we’re nearby! It’s pretty clear that Diane’s other clients and their dogs feel the same way: she’s clearly in high demand, but Diane has nonetheless always been incredibly flexible in arranging training sessions and boarding stays. While Max is very much still a work-in-progress, we’re hugely grateful to Diane for all the help she has given us in learning to work with him. For anyone looking for a trainer who’s not only great at the “training” part of the job, but will also love and care for your dog like their own, we recommend Diane wholeheartedly.

– Amy & Jan