As Amy’s redirects her dog training business to concentrate on helping people train their own service dogs, I can’t begin to explain what a valuable asset this is to North East Ohio. We are lucky to have her here.
Amy has been an amazing trainer and great resource for us and continues to be as we continue to work with our dog on alerting and behavior in public. I think this model of working with a family while the dog lives in the family's house is a great. I highly recommend her to anyone that has been thinking about getting an alert dog or training their own pets to alert.
Today our son and his DAD are sophomores in college 9 hours from home, and they are inseparable. Nova has saved his life countless times, and it is such a comfort to us to know that he is watching over our son. We learned so much from working with Amy that we have since purchased a young puppy to train as a “Back-up” DAD ourselves. With Amy’s continued support –our now 1 year old pup is doing really well, (she has already passed her therapy dog test), and seems like she will make a fantastic service dog in the future.
2. The entire reason we took this course was so my dog could be therapy dog (TDI) trained. She passed 13/14 items on the test, but one item both my dog and another struggled on (greeting a person with a dog, without allowing the dogs to interact & the dogs must not try to greet the other dog). I knew this would be problematic for my dog as she's sociable (& the wording of the test item states the dogs can demonstrate "casual interest", which I took to mean they COULD interact so I thought she could still pass), and I worried that this vital lesson is what I missed during our missed course. However, the other student voiced that the instructor NEVER covered the material in the class, and the instructor then openly acknowledged that no, she had not covered the test item, but instead combined it with a completely different exercise (heeling your dog around a circle of other dogs). The substitute exercise was obviously not remotely adequate for training a dog to sit within two feet of another dog & be expected to ignore the other dog. Thus, my dog failed the test. Did my dog deserve to fail the test, based on this portion? Yes - BECAUSE SHE WASN'T TRAINED. I find it ridiculous that I paid to have someone NOT give me the tools to train my dog correctly.
Amy has been a lifesaver! We secured a Service dog (Diabetic Alert dog, or DAD) near Houston, Texas for our teenage son a couple of years ago. Since we knew very little about training dogs, we wanted to make sure we had some support here once we got our new dog home.Thank gosh we found her! Amy was so fascinated by the idea of a dog actually helping a child with Diabetes stay safe that she flew out to Texas at her own expense to learn as much as she could about DADs!
When we finally brought Nova, our dog home, we were facing many problems and difficulties with alerting and behaviors - without Amy’s help, our son and his DAD would never have become the successful team that they are today. Although we paid the organization in Texas for a “fully trained Service Dog”, we were sold a young dog with a myriad of problems- from pulling instead of heeling to missing life-saving alerts. Amy not only worked with Nova, but also worked with our whole family to help us learn how to work with him on our own.
We were fortunate to find Amy Gutman shortly after we got our yellow lab at 8 weeks. At the time, we had thought about trying to train him to alert to my son who has type 1 diabetes. She started working with all of us on how to train our puppy, Apollo.
Our son loved working with her as well, and they have become good friends. She was extremely sensitive to the feelings of a teenage boy stuck with a horrible disease and a dog he loved but didn’t know how to control.
Amy is bright, ethical and personable, and comes with a wealth of knowledge. When she isn't sure what to do- she is quick to seek out advice from experts who may have the answers. For instance, she will call an endocrinologist to confirm something about the chemistry of low blood sugar. We jokingly call her “the Dog Whisperer” because dogs just seem to instantly behave when she holds their leash!
I originally did not mind Canine University - I was unimpressed during our first three courses due to the lack of individual attention my dog received, but I could let that slide without a wholly negative review, in spite of the fact $160 is quite a hefty fee to have your dog trained for in this area for it to NOT receive some individual attention.
Unfortunately, the service went further downhill.
Once we got our puppy trained on basic behaviors, we were able to start using scents to train him to detect lows.
1. We missed one class. K9U has a policy that does not allow you to make up the class - I understand that & was completely fine with that. I left a voicemail detailing why I had missed and asking if someone could call back to even offer vague hints on what was covered in the course so we could be practicing for the upcoming week. I never received a call back. Our instructor sent out an email, so I responded asking again about the missed course - to no response. Note, I never asked to have my dog make up the class, never asked to meet with anyone, only wanted general information on what to work on, and I find the lack of acknowledgment rude and unprofessional in what should be a customer-service oriented business.
Canine University is a US University based in Bedford Heights, Ohio. Canine University is located at 24850 Aurora Rd, Bedford Heights, OH 44146, USA.
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