Olivia is a 7 year old Australia Red Heeler who has gone through a few traumatic episodes in her life including surgery for a fractured ankle after a dog attack and surgery for a cancerous tumour in her left thigh. Following these incidents her behaviour became increasingly nervous to the extent that I was unable to walk her to the park. She would just sit down and refuse to move. On the occasion where we required a dog walker, she was unable to get Olivia’s lead on let alone go out of the house for a walk.
We had two wonderful sessions with Leonie to help us with the above issues. The first was with my partner to help us understand her behaviour and how to improve it. Leonie spent over three hours with us for the initial assessment and gained a full and detailed history from us. She was able to hypothesise why Olivia was behaving the way she was and how my human behaviour was feeding into it. Leonie was able to educate me on play activities and stimulating exercises for Olivia both inside the flat and out in the park to get her to feel calm and less nervous about walking. Following the initial assessment, within a week, Leonie and written up a full report on her assessment of Olivia and provided us with work sheets on training activities that we can work on.
We followed Leonie’s advice and instructions to the word and within a week Olivia’s behaviour had improved. I am now able to walk Olivia to any park and she is one happy beast! Leonie followed our progress with telephone consultations which gave us encouragement that we were doing things right and answered any additional questions that we had.
She then did a further session with our dog walker on how to behave with Olivia to encourage her to go for walks during the day with a person who she was less familiar with. After an hours session, the dog walker reported feeling much more confident in handling Olivia and has strategies in place to ensure she can eliminate herself.
I can’t thank Leonie enough for her wisdom, patience and continual encouragement and dedication to train Olivia and rehab us owners! She was fantastic and highly recommend her.
Many thanks,
Celeste