Sit Happens

We got our puppy, a German Shepard, Pyrenees mix when he was 10 weeks old, he had spent a few days travelling across the country to meet us. He is a rescue and he is the first dog for our family, so frankly I didn't really know what to expect.

We spent a bunch of time looking through YouTube videos, doing positive reinforcement training, and while he was making progress, it was still quite frustrating, and obedience was nowhere in sight for us, so we decide to look for help training our puppy especially because this was going to be a large dog. We wanted to make sure we would have a well behaved dog that we could trust and would be happy in our family.

We reached out to quite a few trainers, and Marylin responded promptly and booked an intro session. She walked us through the program and introduced her to her dog and showed us what was possible. The big focus of the program is obedience, to keep your dog happy and healthy and safe. We were introduced to the e-collar, and at first I was apprehensive, but Marylin walked us through the process, let us feel the impact of the collar and explained the philosophy of how the collar is used. We decided to trust the process and enrolled.

I'm so glad that we did, this gave us us and our dog better tools to communicate and reinforce positive behaviour, while still being able to get out puppy's attention. Other reviewers have mentioned how the process works so I won't repeat that, but at it's core the collar is a tool to get the dog's attention and allow the dog to focus on the command you are issuing.

Ollie is now 6 months old, and he's a happy loving dog and the whole family loves walking with him. He's great in designated off-leash areas and is generally a well behaved puppy.

One closing comment, this was our first family dog, and we weren't aware how important it was to socialize our dog with other puppies and other people. Marylin gave us some strategies to try and get our puppy socialized with COVID and I'm glad that we did, it made walking Ollie so much nicer since we've done that.

I can't recommend the Sit Happens program enough.

We started Sit Happens with our 16 week old GSDxPyranees in January and after just 2 months he's learned the basic obedience commands and behaves beautifully in public. I trust him off leash on designated off leash dog trails with other dogs passing. He still loves to say hello when he's allowed but will sit nicely and not bark at passers-by.

The training program comes with life time access to the group training classes so the training has been ongoing and we learn new things every week. The distancing protocols are well done as well though I do hope COVID safety time is coming to an end in the next few months!

I was apprehensive about the ecollar at first because of methods I'd seen online but the method used by Sit Happens is nothing like those! The ecollar provided with the cost of the program is highly rated and comes with 100 levels so if you have a sensitive dog like ours it can be set very low to the point where I can't feel it at all.

I highly recommend this training program to anyone with either a new dog or a dog that needs some training support!

My husband and I decided to go with Sit Happens because their method of training and disciplining a dog are effective as long as the dog owners pair the training with consistency. At first I was skeptical due to the usage of an e-collar as it was my husband who attended the free consultation so I was uninformed beforehand on how the e-collar works. But now I know the e-collar is a safe way to ensure that our puppy listens to us in the face of any possible hazards/dangers when she is off leash and out of our reach. After attending all of my puppy’s initial one-on-one training sessions with Marilyn and all the puppy playtime with other Sit Happens students (puppy socialization) we now see better cooperation from our playful yet stubborn shih tzu. Starting her training and socialization at a young age, she does not have any anxiety and fear when exploring the world around her when we take her to different environments. I believe with Sit Happens our puppy will continue to grow into a confident, independent, and well trained dog. To top it all off, our puppy absolutely LOVES her trainer Marilyn. Whenever she sees Marilyn she immediately runs towards her and gives her an enthusiastic greeting.

There are too many good things to write about Sit Happens! When we first decided to get our puppy, we researched many trainers locally and were met with challenges facing response, getting information, scheduling or seeing success cases, Sit Happens was immediately responsive, scheduled an introduction session and showed as many successfully trained dogs! The warmth from our trainer was undeniable and our pup fell in love immediately (honestly, her favourite person other than her grandma!).

My partner and I grew up with aggressive dogs that were meant to protect property, as loving as they are to us at home, they weren't a dog you were comfortable to walk in public, all we knew when we got our current pup is we wanted a dog that we could trust, and have no fear bringing in public. With Sit Happens, we've gotten that request and even more. We have a less than a year old pup that walks like a dream on and off leash, holds and reognizes multiple commands and receives nothing but compliments from anyone who meets her.

We do and will continue to recommend everyone we can to Sit Happens, they're simply fantastic.