Tyche, the Blue Heeler

Neece Campione
Fairmount, WV 

We adopted a Blue Heeler, Tyche, who was neglected and never trained. Tyche was a problem from the moment we brought her home. The main issue was severe aggression towards our Husky, Stazi. We tried medication in desperation, and seriously thought it wasn't going to work out and that we'd have to get rid of her. We really didn't want to do that because we knew no one else would want a 2 year old dog who wasn't house-trained and was extremely aggressive to other dogs. 

Our vet recommended Pet Behavior Change and we started working with Lindsay in January 2012. We didn't know if it would help, because Tyche's problems seemed so severe, but we were willing to do anything we could to save this sweet and loving dog.

On our first visit with Lindsay, she helped identify the real problem and gave practical suggestions for how to modify the behavior, not just of Tyche, but Stazi as well, since the Husky was actually instigating the aggression.

Lindsay gave my husband and I plenty of helpful information, which was vital for correcting all the myths we thought were true about dog behavior and training. Lindsay was great to work with and helped us each step of the way with basic obedience as well as addressing each issue. She identified what we were doing to make the problems worse, then helped us modify our behavior which made huge differences almost immediately. In fact, telling us how we could change how we interacted with our dogs was probably the most helpful.

One thing to keep in mind is that while Lindsay is full of helpful, scientifically sound information, we had to actually do the work of training with our dogs every day. It takes time. Not a huge amount, but I think we saw such great results because we did our homework.

Lindsay also recommended additional reading which was great, because there are so many books out there and so many myths, that I had no idea which school of thought was sound and which were actually harmful to having a healthy, happy dog who listens well.

We've finished with our training with Lindsay but we continue to benefit from all that we learned from her. All three dogs play together, and they don't fight anymore. We have 3 happy dogs thanks to all we learned from Lindsay, and they get better all the time as we continue to work with them to reinforce what they had learned.

If you love your dog, you can learn so much from working with Pet Behavior Change. This is money well spent, and you can use it for most of the animals (and maybe even children) in your life.

A very happy dog mom, Neece Campione