It's been a year overdue in writing this...our Lyle LOVES Julie and thank goodness as he is a very very difficult dog to handle.
We adopted our little man in April 2011 from WonderDog Rescue, not knowing at the time what a handful we got. We had heard great things for years from my brother and his wife, Nikki M., about Julie, who walks their dog. Julie took one look at Lyle's photo and said she had to have him in her group. We were pumped at having dog cousins play and walk together!
But Lyle turned out after about a month to have severe anxiety and socialization issues, right around the time his immunizations were complete and he was able to walk with Julie. It was so bad that he got kicked out of SF Puppy Prep, couldn't walk on leash without lunging and barking and we couldn't have friends over to the house without an hour long episode of barking that ultimately failed unless the guest was patient and a dog lover. We had to spend quite a bit of money on specialized Reactive Rover classes with SPCA (which Julie highly endorsed the trainer, Kim, and was instrumental in getting us approved and into the class by sharing her insights with Kim behind the scenes. While the class was very helpful, I will say that without Julie's daily involvement with walking Lyle and helping him be a confident little guy in those early months, we'd be far worse off.
Looking back on the first 6 months of trial and pain after adopting Lyle and having to severely adjust our lives, Julie was there every step of the way to help us not just with making him exhausted from a long run to the dog park, but socializing him with other dogs and people and giving us tips and pointers for our daily struggles. He now is friendly with strangers in dog parks off leash, has less problems saying hi to other dogs (so long as he doesn't have his favorite ball in his mouth!) and barks only a few times when we walk him at people and it takes about 15 minutes for him to get used to a new guest in our house.
Bonus points: takes adorable photos of Lyle, has come up with several of his cute nicknames, easy to get a hold of and is easy to work with for pet sitting when out of town. And, if she's out of town, she has an extensive network of dog walkers that Lyle has socialized with and that I've met at SPCA that we know are trustworthy to help out. read more