Chunky

We have had a lot of behavioural issues with our 2 year old Frenchie, Chunky! He started to show aggression as a puppy towards strangers, children and dogs. You might call it fear aggression of a sort. As we had a baby on the way, this was a bit of a nightmare.

We went through 3 separate trainers, including one of the most well known in the country, before we met Justin.

In all 3 cases we felt very let down, with poor advice and poor follow up. The ‘famous’ trainer we went to gave us advice that made the dog considerably more anxious and therefore more aggressive.

In the first session Justin came to our house, it was clear he was cut from a different cloth than anyone else we had met, he spent 4 hours with us, and it was clear he was not going anywhere until the job was done. He is tireless in this respect.

A good mix of common sense advice and real passion, he gave us tools to work with that made an impact on Chunky’s behaviour over the following months.

A few months later with a house move and a small child, we really took our eye of the ball with Chunky, and he regressed a lot (house moves and babies are the 2 big stress points in a dog’s life, Justin told us). However at this point we were also really stressed and were wondering about our ability to cope with the dog, a child and a falling down farm house! On top of that a local dog trainer had advised us to have the dog rehomed immediately or be put down!! We were at a low ebb to say the least.

Chunky went to stay with Halo for a week, where he got on perfectly with the staff and other dogs…Relief! On the back of this Justin was able to give us some really good common sense advice on how to handle the dog and how to train him over time to improve his behaviour.

Almost immediately we felt able to cope with our dog again and whilst we all know Chunky is never likely to be the most sociable dog in the world, we are all in a good place with him, he is happy, we are relaxed, and we keep working on him every day to make him a confident well behaved Frenchie!!!!

We are happy dog owners again. Justin spends real time with dogs and their owners and has an amazing level of passion about what he does. Dog psychologist, maybe human psychologist too!!

Matt, Alex and Chunky