We've had several dogs the last 30 years and we always worked hard to help them "learn the ropes." We planned to do the same with Ira, but he had his own plan. We got him at 8 weeks and by week 12 he had turned into Ira the Terrible—biting, barking, jumping—and nothing we tried seemed to help. We had always had nothing but success with training our dogs, but we were overwhelmed and honestly didn’t know how to "fix" Ira's problems or even whether we could keep him. Getting Melanie on board was a total game changer. We were astonished at the immediate and complete rapport she established with Ira. Within 5 minutes of starting the very first session, Ira started to change. More importantly, Melanie immediately started teaching us how to change our own behavior, our tactics and methods with Ira. We learned to employ her tactics: careful observation, continuous connectivity, positive reinforcement and minimal corrective action. That required us to be patient and focus on Ira completely, which allowed us to better connect with him, understand his needs and help him understand what we needed from him. By session two or three, it felt like we had a completely different dog—both at home and out in the world. In reality, though, he was the very same, sweet, adorable, smart little guy, and WE had changed for the better. Later, when Ira started drifting into other unwanted behavior – like resource guarding with his food and toys - we reached out to Melanie right away, and she taught us how to help Ira trust us enough to "trade" resources and work with us to get what he wants and needs. With confidence and clarity, Melanie explained and demonstrated for us appropriate techniques and strategies to solve each problem behavior we have encountered with Ira. He now doesn't just cooperate with us, he seems to really enjoy doing it. Melanie works with us indoors and outside, using simple strategies designed to first get Ira's attention and then his cooperation. Our life with Ira, especially training and lessons, has become fun for everybody – dog and people. We began with her 6-session puppy package. By the time we finished that, Ira and we were all eager to continue more training lessons with Melanie. At 6 months, Ira is hands down the most well-mannered, cooperative and the happiest dog on the block. We truly don’t think we could have done this without Melanie’s support. We were at our wits' end, but her patience, expertise and dedication to Ira as a student - and the two of us as both clients and students - changed everything. From Melanie, we have learned a whole new and better approach to life with Ira. We feel very fortunate to have her available as a resource for us as Ira grows into the amazing dog we always hoped he could be.