Why hire a Certified personal trainer/walker?

• For dog walking, often times people feel it’s fine hiring amateur dog walkers who may/may not know any knowledge about dog walking. This results, many times, in them providing inadequate care, from being unable to handle the dog with medical conditions, being unable to recognise common symptoms of lethal conditions (e.g. Stomach Bloating), to spoiling the dog on the walk/in the house. There have been reports of a certain company hiring untrained walkers, paying them $900/month, resulting in inexperienced and unmotivated care. They spoil the dogs through improper handling, sometimes letting the dog lead the walk and other times with leashes pulled too tightly.

Without proper discipline, what happens is not only does the dog gradually become unruly on walks, it deteriorates the relationship with the owner and the dogs. As I mention in my training methodology, every healthy relationship requires structure and dogs require strong leadership. Without structure, this gives space to behavioural problems to develop. This may not seem to be a problem when the dogs are puppies but as they grow, they problems can and will escalate till a day when abuse and abandonment happens, as I’ve observed in my years volunteering at shelters.

• For dog training, most clients come to me because they want personal attention to their problems. They see conflicting schools of thought on the internet/tv and wonder which is the right one. Corporate dog training schools are great for learning new tricks quickly but when it comes to implementing the tricks, dealing with specific behavioural problems or having the owners discipline the dogs, sometimes such skills are not imparted, causing months of training to quickly become unravelled. Owners are often given are quick superficial tricks for their pets to perform. What they are not given are lifelong skills to deal with the root of their dogs behavioural problems, which can and will manifest in a host of ways, from item possession to food aggression , if left untreated.

I provide a safe environment for my clients to share their problems with me and work closely with them to come up with custom solutions and teaching them the proper techniques to deal with the root of the problems for long-term effectiveness.