I am Denise Willis

I started training dogs in 2001, after my 1-year-old lovable 110 lb lug of a shepherd dragged me down an icy sidewalk chasing a cat, or something. I never did see what it was. He injured me on the way.

I got him trained fairly quickly, nostalgia set in, and I got a puppy. The same techniques were not working on the puppy at all, and I was stumped. We went back into training, and my trainer, who became a mentor, had me teach him a completely different way. It turned out my puppy had a completely different thinking process than my older dog and needed a completely different approach.

Mind blown. I had no idea there was that much to it. That started years of learning everything I could about dogs. I have had incredible mentors, worked with some of the brightest brains in animal behavior, and I am constantly learning from every dog I train and every client I teach.

I compete with my dogs in various sports and enjoy lazy downtime with them, but mostly I enjoy watching their clownish personalities shine.

The lesson from my shepherd and my puppy is the one I would want you to take from this page: the dog in front of me decides the plan. Not the method I happen to prefer, not what worked on the last dog, and not what a video says ought to work. Two dogs in the same house with the same owner can need two different approaches, and being unwilling to notice that is how people spend a year getting nowhere.

In practice that makes me a balanced trainer. I use e-collar work and structured socialization alongside obedience, and I say so plainly rather than burying it. I do not use a remote collar as a shortcut through fear or aggression. I fit it and condition it properly, and I teach you to handle it rather than handing it over. If a different approach suits your dog better you will hear that from me, including when it means I am not the right person for the job.

It also means I train where the behavior actually happens. A dog that performs in a training hall and falls apart on your own street has not been trained for your life, it has been trained for the hall. So the work happens in your home, on your block, and along the routes you really walk. A good part of every program is teaching you the handling and the timing, because that is what decides whether the change is still there in six months.

What I will not do is promise you an outcome. Results depend on the dog, the history, the household, and how consistently the work continues after I leave. Be careful with anyone who guarantees otherwise. What I do promise is a straight assessment.

Everyone starts with a phone conversation, and it works as an initial interview. We talk about what your dog is actually doing and what you want changed, and I give you a rough plan for how I would address it through training. If the plan sounds right we book a date and start. Sometimes I will ask for an evaluation first instead.

An evaluation is where I come to your home and we have a face-to-face conversation about your dog and your goals. It earns its place when your dog has extreme behavior or an unusual living situation, because I want to see the behavior first hand rather than work from a description of it. Dogs are also very good at not performing their worst habit while a stranger stands in the room, which is itself useful information.

An evaluation costs $100. That $100 rolls into the overall training fee if you go ahead, and there is no obligation to go ahead. If I do not think I am the right trainer for your dog, the evaluation is where I will tell you so.

From there the work runs through one of the programs: in-home private lessons from $700, Kick Start at $1,600, or board and train from $3,600 with your dog staying in my home rather than a kennel. The behavior specialties, meaning aggression, reactivity, resource guarding, anxiety and service dog work, are not sold separately. You pick the problem, then we pick the program that solves it. See every program and what each one costs.