Saved 2 Dogs Lives

I don’t even know where to begin with how much Jeff Gellman has helped Badass Brooklyn Animal Rescue. Jeff has literally saved the lives of two dogs whose aggression had gotten so bad that no other trainer would help and the option presented to us was to put them down. In both cases the dogs went to board and train and are living healthy, happy, loved lives. I always thought of Jeff for the toughest cases, but he is great with all dogs and I have become a believer that all dogs can use the basic skills that Jeff teaches. Yesterday he did a training with our fosters and we have this super hyper beagle puppy that we call ‘Crazy Gretel.’ She could NOT settle down or sit still. Because of her youth and beauty she was getting a LOT of applications but none of them came through because many were not good apps and others met her and just didn’t want to deal with an energizer bunny bouncing off the walls. Her foster would walk her for HOURS every day and still could not wear her out. In literally half an hour Jeff transformed this hyper dog into a well behaved CALM dog! I have NEVER seen anything like it. I have a beagle and have fostered a lot of beagles and it is hard to eat anything around a beagle. Yesterday Jeff taught Gretel place command and after about 15 mins of reps she was doing so well we did longer and longer stints and an hour later we all sat around eating pizza and she stayed in place command the whole time and fell asleep! She stayed in place command while other dogs walked by, people walked in and out of the front door, and we ate PIZZA! If I had seen this on a tv show I would not have believed it had been done in half an hour! Gretel had JUST gotten an amazing application from a family in CT with kids and a fenced yard – literally the home I had dreamed about for her – the perfect home. She is there now and they are keen to keep learning and working with her and I honestly believe that what we learned yesterday with place command will be the difference between this family wanting to adopt her (because they can now see the potential of a great family dog, but had she gone to them still hyper I think they would have thought, yikes, who wants to deal with that, as all the other applicants did). Because of Jeff Gellman Solid K9 a dog who was set to be killed in a high kill pound in GA is now living with a loving family with kids and a fenced yard in CT and succeeding like a gold medalist in Place!
I will write more because the two stories of the dogs he saved from euthanasia (after they had been rescued and bit people), are pretty mind boggling. Let me just say this for now – when I first started rescuing I pulled a dog who came up and showed fear aggression. I had asked some local trainers for help but none would take the case or help me and none would take the dog on board and train (which is what he needed). I was trying to figure this out and after about a week, at midnight on a Friday night, he jumped up unprovoked and bit my rescue partner in the face, leaving a puncture wound. We loaded him into a crate in my car and when I got home at 2am emailed Jeff because I did not feel that I could safely handle the dog and my only other option (we had NO help – it was just the 2 of us) was to take him to the vet to be humanely euthanized on Saturday morning. He emailed me back at 230am and told me he would meet me in New Haven to pick up the dog for board and train. He trained that dog and told me that he wasn’t even the worst case he had seen. That dog is living a good life now because of Jeff. NO ONE would help us (I had been emailing people for a week). And it’s not like other trainers are responding to emails at 230am on a Friday night or driving 2 hours out of their way to pick up an aggressive dog. Besides the TRAINING that Jeff does – which he is great at – you will not meet anyone more dedicated to helping dogs live good lives and helping owners keep their dogs. Dogs are dying in shelters because people can’t/won’t train them so they dump them at the pound to be killed alone and scared. People are returning dogs to the rescue when the dog develops aggression but as the rescue, where do we take the dog? We sure as hell aren’t dumping them back at the shelter. We have to then train the dog (and find a foster to work with the dog, which is not so easy when a dog has bitten people). I had NO experience with prong collars or remote collar training before I met Jeff. I, like a lot of people, did not understand these tools and they freaked me out to be honest. I have put the prong around my wrist and I have felt the LOW level of the remote collar that Jeff uses (my level is a 12 fyi). I have seen how gentle his training is and I am no longer scared of the tools that I didn’t know or understand before. You might not agree with all of his methods or tools – you don’t have to. He does what it takes to help dogs and help people and has gone above and beyond what you can ever imagine to save lives.

Sara Alize Cross, Badass Brooklyn Animal Rescue