Helping Idaho Dogs, Inc.

HIDi Testimonials

Rusty is a three year old Aussie with a big heart, but he has some issues. Don’t we all? I started him in agility as soon as he was old enough and we attempted our first trial. Needless to say, we had a rough first trial. That’s when I met Julie Bender. I went to the Canine Good Citizen classes with little hope of actually fixing some of the problems we had going on. For one thing, my dog would randomly bark and growl at some people. He was also pretty uncontrollable around other dogs. When I went to the class, I was hoping to gain at least a little more control, but up to that point we had had no hope of ever getting control of this wild puppy. Julie seemed to understand him when we talked to her at the trial, so I decided to at least give it a try. That was the best decision I made for my dog.
At the CGC class, I found nothing but encouragement for my dog and me. I was feeling hopeless because at the trial he’d run out of the ring and had been very reactive. The first thing that set us up for the road to success was that we were completely positive with Rusty. When you use positive training, it relieves the stress. Beyond that, Julie and Tammy were both right there to help me control my dog if anything should go wrong. That in itself gave me the courage to keep trying. I was taught how to handle my dogs reactive episodes, and how to prevent them. With the reward based training, I passed the CGC test with my dog. It gave us a new confidence.
After passing the CGC test, Rusty and I went back to attempt another agility trial. Wow, what a difference. We got 6 perfect runs out of the 10 we entered. The four runs we did not make perfectly were not bad runs at all. We were so close on a few of them to getting that perfect run. Seeing the difference, I kept taking Rusty back to CGC classes, helping where I could and working more with Rusty. In July of this year, we competed in our third agility trial. We got all of our six runs perfect.
CGC made a difference for my dog and for me. We’re still working on many of the things we did for the class, and we keep going back to class. Walks with my dog aren’t nearly so stressful. Rusty has learned that people aren’t as scary as they once were. We’re still working on that but he’s doing so much better. Believe it or not, at one point I thought that if I couldn’t get him under control that I might have to get rid of him. At one point, agility was out of question. But look at us now! We’re competing in agility, still loving our CGC classes, and doing doggy drill team.
Thank you Julie and Tammy! Both of you have helped restore the relationship between me and my dog. I think that I can say for both Rusty and I, that we love coming to CGC classes and drill team. I know that I can say for myself, that I love volunteering with Helping Idaho Dogs. Positive training made the difference. CGC made the difference.