I live in New York City in an apartment building with 60 apts and lots of other families with dogs.

My dog Levi, a dachshund, ran my household.  He would bark non-stop whenever someone came to our door until they acknowledged him.  My neighbors barely spoke to me they were so pissed about the barking.  I couldn’t walk down the street with him without a huge barking episode and aggressive behavior towards other dogs. He had many dog enemies both on my block and in my building. If approached by a dog or person trying to be friendly to him he would at first wag his tail as if he wanted to be friends and then he would all of a sudden snap and growl.  I couldn’t trust him around anyone.  My children refused to walk him saying it was way to embarrassing.  He is so smart that he knew how to manipulate me to get his way.

I think I lived in a sort of denial about Levi, that his behavior wasn’t so bad and it was everyone else’s problem.  We even disabled our doorbell because Levi would bark incessantly when ever he heard the doorbell.  I instructed all the doormen to call me on the phone when ever they needed to announce a delivery or a visitor to try and contain the barking.

Even when he started biting people, at first it was my daughter’s friends, I told myself they were exciting him to much, then he bit the building handiman which penetrated my denial enough so that I started to get upset, but then it all really blew up in my face.  

I design jewelry and I invited a potential client to my house to see a few pieces.  She asked if she could bring a friend to which I replied of course.  Well, as they were leaving Levi for no reason at all,except that they didn’y buy any jewelry, stuck his head out of his bed and nipped her on the ankle.  She got completely hysterical, it turned out she had just had invitro-fertilization and was carrying many embryos.  THIS WAS AWFUL, I felt completely blown away and she was threatening to sue me screaming that I had a vicious dog and I had to do something about it.  I guess you could say it snapped me out of my denial big time.

I had heard about Jeff through my niece who had brought her dacshcund, Squid, Levi’s brother to him the previous month.  Squid had been having the same type of aggression problems, I guess it runs in the family.
 
So I committed to the 6 week boot camp program for Levi and Jeff came to NYC to pick him up and see his environment so he could simulate it for Levi at boot camp.

WELL……… Levi came home a week ago and is a changed dog.  He still has his adorable personality but he is actually trained, something I thought would never happen.  When I put him in his PlACE command he actually stays until I release him.  He HEELS when we walk and isn’t really aggressive to dogs he doesn’t know out on the block.  He still has a few enemies, I guess he holds a grudge, but it is nothing like BEFORE Jeff came into his life.

I am so completely grateful to Jeff and his training methods, I especially like that the training is not reward based and doesn’t give food rewards for listening and good behavior.  Levi came home looking FAB as if he had been to a doggy spa, he lost weight and is in show dog shape.

I think of the money spent on boot camp as tuition to the solid K9dog college and the education Levi received was well worth it.
 
I just returned from walking Levi and Squid in the park it’s so much fun to walk them now, people stop and admire them all the time, of course they are completely handsome dogs, and now it is a pleasure to walk them no DRAMA.