Clever Doggies

I do not recommend this trainer. I specifically told her what I needed help with and she said she could help with it and to do a evaluation which was $ 90. She is a very nice woman but didn’t spend any time on what I needed help with. I don’t expect results after one evaluation, but she said she would email me notes and next steps and never did. When I kept asking what to do about the situation I originally needed help with, she would dodge the topic and then her answer was basically to just avoid that situation, which isn’t helpful at all.

We (me, my husband and our 2 yr old aussie) have been working with Corinne for nearly a year now. A year ago, we had had our «rescued» aussie for about 3 months and were wondering if there was anything else we could try or if we were going to have to return her to the breeder. Tilley had literally torn a hole in our wall and could barely be taken out in public lest she throw a tantrum should another dog appear even on the horizon!
Today, after a lot of work, Tilley is definitely here to stay, can go out on walks in the neighborhood and hiking and even to the dog beach. She’s learned to stay alone while we are gone and is (almost) always willing to work with us at home or out and bout. She could probably even become an agility dog at this point! Here’s how Corinne got us here:
1. She teaches you to understand and listen to your dog. Our dog clearly communicates when she’s stressed out and about to erupt but we didn’t know how to listen before.
2. She teaches you to offer the dog an alternative behavior at these times and then reward the dog for doing the suggested behavior instead of behaving badly. She goes through training with you and then tells you how to work with the dog until you get together again.
3. She suggests training gear when necessary and usually has the items herself to see if it works with the dog or not. This is much better than throwing money at the internet on random dog-​fix stuff… we had done plenty of that before we met Corinne.
4. She uses positive reinforcement and clicker training — no damage to the dog. There are many schools of thought on this. We were actually a little concerned that Tilley wouldn’t get the message, but she has. She loves trying to figure out what she’s supposed to be doing when you pull out the clicker and refocuses her attention on us. We had tried a little bit of negative reinforcement with another trainer before Corinne and it just freaked tilley out. We could see that she wasn’t actually learning, but was just cowering. Corinne’s methods are much better. Even if your dog is perfect, clicker training is awesome. Corinne will teach you how to master critical timing.
5. She’s affordable and patient. She’s very responsive.
6. She obviously loves training and you can tell is constantly improving her methods — but just with experience and by actively taking training for herself. Corinne has invested many, many hours in training champion agility/​rally/​etc dogs as well as rehabilitating challenging dogs. She is so happy to see her clients improve and genuinely cares about improving dogs and their families!
Whether your dog is an angel or acts like a devil, working with Corinne will help you bond with your dog. She tackles the worst kinds of problems and wants to set every dog up for success. I can’t recommend her any more highly.

We have been working with Corinne for about two months with our little dachshund, Ringo. Ringo is a little bit neurotic, as he was a rescue and he has considerable separation anxiety.
We have already seen great improvement in him! He no longer freaks out when we leave and he is much less nervous around other dogs. We are still working on the anxiety issues, because those won’t go away over night, but we can already tell that he is feeling more confident.
Corinne is great at training not only Ringo, but us as well. She has the same beliefs about dog training that we do, so it’s easy for us to follow her methods. We appreciate the emphasis on teaching the dog, not trying to dominate him. Corinne is fantastic and I would recommend her to anyone!

We’ve been working with Corinne since late summer of last year. There has been a huge improvement in our dog’s behavior and ability to listen. Our home life and relationship with our dog is so much better. Our dog can do tricks now and is so confident when he pleases us. Our only regret is that fact that we didn’t sign up sooner. Corinne is great and worth every penny. =)

Corinne has been working with my 5 month old Australian Shepherd and me for a couple of months, and I’m amazed at the progress. Using the «marker» or as some call it «clicker» method has proven to be light years ahead of the old yank and crank method used for years. The dog really enjoys his training sessions, and me too. Corinne takes the time to train me along with the dog. Thus, when I take the dog out on a training session, my mistakes are few, and the dog learns faster. Believe me when I say that the trainer makes the mistakes, not the dog. I highly recommend Corinne/​Clever Doggies