Drayton is a fantastic dog trainer. If you want a professional, he's your guy!!! He listened to my concerns and the recommendations worked 100% Thank you Drayton read more

I grew up with shepherds and have been involved with search and rescue and military training. We got our new puppy and know the importance of socialization, specially for a GSD. Well...we just got kicked out of class because we asked them to not treat him for jumping on the gate. They literally threw treats ALL over the place, even hitting us with them. The pictures are of his throw up after each class, because he had too many. Don't go here. Petsmart has puppy classes, go there. Drayton you need help. read more

Urban Dawgs - Pet Training Near Me - Red Bank, New Jersey

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This is a great opportunity for your pup to socialize and for you to learn the core training techniques and commands. In just six weeks we were able to learn and implement with our 6 month old puppy, Millie, things we thought would take months. Staying consistent with the training at home is key. Drayton is very responsive to client questions even outside of class. Definitely recommend Puppy Kindergarten! read more

Our girl pup enjoyed her 6 weeks in puppy K and got to interact with other dogs in a safe space - great info and advice from Drayton and Danielle. She gets compliments for her behavior and manners at daycare and has everything to do with her training at UD and home. Thanks for a great experience! read more

Read the negative reviews. They are 100% on point. Complete waste of money. Rude. Gaslighting. Confusing. Mansplaining. Just to name a few. He doesn't listen to anything you say or explain. Also needs to have the last word in no matter what. You're wrong. He's right. Good luck. read more

DO NOT BRING YOUR BELOVED DOG HERE!!! Drayton uses treat driven methods, and memorized 4 key concepts which are not helpful. He LOVES to hear his voice and doesn't care what your needs are as a client. He will throw THOUSANDS of treats at not only your dog, but also you, the owner. TREATS SHOULD BE LIMITED, but he throws so much out boy puked. He will say yes, good boy when your dog jumps on the fence to reward him for every single thing he/she does. Our puppy has thrown up those disgusting treats every time. Today, we were kicked out of the rest of classes because he claims he RECORDED my husband and I without consent, and claims we were rude, because I told them to stop rewarding our puppy every time he jumped. (We had already decided to take ourselves out of the class prior to him telling us he recorded us and wanted us out). READ the reviews, he's kicked out a lot of folks. I think he has no talent, and that this is a scam. Save your $300 and go to PetSmart where the puppies can actually play. You are not allowed to talk to other owners either. BUYERS BEWARE. read more

Urban Dawgs - DO NOT BRING YOUR BELOVED DOG HERE!!! - Pet Training Near Me - Red Bank, New Jersey

I had such an uncomfortable experience with this owner. I have never come across someone who is in the business of working with people who are trying to give their dog their best life only to realize ... this guy doesn't like people. I don't even think he liked my dog. I'm not sure he even likes himself. Now I know why his business model has you pay a very large fee up front with the option to call for support after an introduction. There is NO way I would call this guy for additional information. I left there feeling judged, confused, and without any guidance on the one issue we were hoping to gain insight for our dog. read more

We took our standard poodle to Drayton as a puppy and then again for extra help getting him calmed down and used to other dogs. Currently he is 4 years old now and in the play and train classed with about 5 other dogs. Drayton and his staff, Danielle, are fantastic. They love all the dogs and are experts in how to train them to be happy and healthy pets. We cannot thank them enough for helping us out with our fur baby. I highly recommend Urban Dawgs. You will be so happy you go and so will your pup. read more

Went to Urban Dawgs to help with aggression problems with my german shepherd. Complete waste of money. They stick to this stick ideology of "positive only" which sounds good on the surface. What they don't tell you is that it doesn't work with all dogs. After thousands of dollars with zero results, I went to a balanced trainer who gave my dog a fair a quick correction when he was exhibiting the undesired behavior and the problem was solved. Hasn't had a problem since. read more

Great training techniques! Dogs respond to methods and consistency. Physical play very well supervised.

See my original review on Google from 5 years ago - I echo those same words! Drayton and his assistants are incredible with dogs. He saved our rescue Bugsy from bad advice given by incompetent trainers, and now we brought our new puppy Chloe to puppy kindergarten with him. Chloe was able to very safely socialize and learned many new skills like sit, stay, leave it. We also learned how to desensitize her to stimuli and build good behaviors. Drayton is funny and so good at what he does, but he tells it like it is! (which is a good thing). We will never go elsewhere for dog training. Highly recommend! read more

Phenomenal Service. Owner operated, Drayton speaks dog. At times he may come off a bit brash but it's all in love of the dog nothing is personal. Life is better with dogs, and your life with dogs will be significantly better with the skills you learn at Urban Dawgs read more

We are in week 4 of puppy kindergarten, and I find this technique and experience remarkable. Our puppy is learning, and loves the class. Vyolet and Drayton are pros- kind, organized, knowledgable and caring. This is our fourth puppy and while experienced we can always learn. You can teach old dogs new tricks ! This is by far the best training experience I have had, and plan to continue with further training at Urban Dawgs. Highly recommended. read more

I registered my dog Jasper for Puppy Kindergarten here in April and still practice many exercises from this class months later. Drayton and Laura were excellent, responsive and professional with the pups. By the third week, Jasper was very excited when we pulled up to the Urban Dawgs facility. Kindergarten Classes were one hour long. Drayton covers a lot in class and moves pretty quickly and efficiently. Lots of positive reinforcement. The class time was split up nicely between puppy parents working on commands with our dogs and also devoting time to let the pups run free and socialize among themselves while Drayton supervised to ensure no jumping/aggressiveness, etc. They send you home with homework every week with activities to work on with your dog as well as a very informative packet with videos to reference. Drayton has answers to everything from how to keep your dog busy, how to prevent digging/mouthing to what food/treats are best for your dog. The class is very effective. If you truly want to benefit and get your money worth out of this class you must follow through with the exercises at home/on walks/outside of class. Drayton even emphasized to not hesitate to reach out to him with any questions even AFTER Jasper graduated as he considers his clients members for life! If you're serious about molding your pup into a loyal and obedient dog, I would highly recommend Urban Dawgs. Thanks Drayton! read more

I took my dog here in the summer of 2013. She's a mixed breed rescue that looks primarily like a lab. After you attend their puppy kindergarten class, if you pay attention and do a lot of work at home, you'll have a dog that will understand commands and obey based on the expectation of a treat (reward based training). You can use the tools that they teach you and apply them to teaching your dog any command you can think of (mark good behaviors with a "yes" and treat it). You can also use the tools to communicate when they've done something wrong (ie: mark something negative (like counter surfing) with an "oops, too bad" promptly followed by a time out). These are very effective techniques that you use with patience and will allow you to retain your sanity while training your puppy. I giving them a high rating b/c I truly believe they are the best dog trainers in the area. They've put a lot of thought into their program and put a lot of time into transferring their knowledge to you. I take off a star as a warning to people attending their class for the first time. They are fantastic dog people, but not the best people people. You may leave there feeling inadequate and chastised (I felt that way after every class). They're in no way mean, but they should perhaps put more thought into applying their positive reinforcement and reward based training (in the form of kind words or even encouragement) towards the people. After all, we're really being trained as well, and I'm sure the technique is transferable to humans. That said, I've referred both family and friends to their program, and firmly believe they are the best dog training program in the area. read more

When we got our puppy, my wife said she heard about this place and their "puppy kindergarten". I thought this sounded ridiculous and probably expensive. In retrospect, enrolling our dog in puppy k (followed by the intermediate class) was the best possible thing we could have done, and we now have a well trained, well adjusted dog as a result. Totally worth the time, not nearly as expensive as I thought something called "puppy kindergarten" would be, and Drayton and Vyolet are totally professional, and are happy to explain the "whys" behind everything they do in the classes, which was huge for me. As a side note, they also did 1 on 1 training with our neighbors who had some ill-behaved dogs who were too old for the puppy k class, and we all saw the dogs' behavior improve pretty quickly. I would totally recommend to anyone, totally worth it to have a well trained dog. read more

Buyers BEWARE!!! Please read this before proceeding to this place! I was going to take my puppy there and thank GOD I didn't! When I first was interested in his services his text message approach is NOT the way to go. When you have a question, it is always visit my website as a response. I went elsewhere. The owner likes to use public parking to train dogs that can be aggressive! I was walking to my appointment and he abruptly told me to turn around and walk the other way. I did but as I Walked I stated he didn't own this property and the public is free to walk in a public parking lot. He proceeded to get nasty and ignore his customers. You can tell a lot by someone's personality when you are not paying them! Trust me, read all the reviews about this place. He has a terrible attitude and he should NOT have the privilege to train a family member at a high cost with poor customer service and poor character. Just walk by one day and see how he speaks down to his clients. Just sad, people think they can speak to any kind of way because he chose a bad location to properly train animals. He keeps his windows dark for a reason. Someone needs to train HIM! read more

I walked my dog by off leash today because she had to relieve herself and I forgot her leash. She's 10 years old, well trained, obedient, and never reacts to people or other dogs. The owner walked out trying to escort a dog out, and closed the door quickly when he saw us. Once we passed by, he came out and asked us to please keep our dog on a leash, which we responded "Sure". Not satisfied with our response, he said, "No really, it's against the law, the dog needs to be on a leash." I said, "Fine, ok," to which he responded, "No it's not fine, where's the leash, I'm going to call the cops on you two, you're really easy to spot." The exchange went from a casual request from him, which I know was valid and responded as such, and escalated into a threat to call the police. I will not be taking any of my pets here for training and will absolutely not be recommending it to others. read more

How I came to Urban Dawgs was through a referral. We took our 16 week old puppy to take his picture with Santa to donate money to our local shelter. Imagine my surprise when he started lunging, growling and hackles up every time and a dog barked or looked at him too long. I was stunned; this is when bad things about the future run through your head. Then owner Karen, of Jakes Pets in Wayne, approached me to offer guidance and a place to wait instead of the line to avoid such a heart breaking experience. Having owned a dog that had an aggression issue I instantly thought the worst. Karen was nice enough to share a story about her Pitbull and the trainers at Urban Dawgs. I left that Sunday knowing the Vyolet and Drayton where my answer just from hearing about their positive reward based training. Cody is a sensitive breed and I knew at his age this could either become a memory of puppyhood or a permanent part of his personality. The choice was mine, I opted to think of Cody's best interest and drive the hour past hundreds of typical trainers (those who use choke collars and tough consequences, etc) to offer a positive experience we both could grow from, not one that breaks him down for me to build him back up. We enrolled and paid for the puppy kindergarten class that started the following Saturday. We could not make the intro class and because of Cody's behavior we thought it best to have private session first. We soon learned Cody was too big and lost all his puppy teeth so it now became a single private session we paid for. Having two dogs is great but trying to get a puppy to pay attention to you, you're commands, even his name instead of, Buddy, the other dog... HA fat chance! We learned how to get Cody to acknowledge his name, come when called, sit, down, leave it, take it but most importantly how to focus on us. We learned a lot in those couple of hours but naively focused on what we just spent not what we learned. This was an interesting ride home to say the least. Once home we committed to continue with what we learned and Buddy enjoyed a stay at grandmas so we had no distractions. It has only been a week and the difference in Cody and our relationship is 100% different. Even with Buddy home Cody looks to us first, comes when called and has made huge improvements when on a leash. Urban Dawgs has taught me how to be the person I need to be for Cody. I appreciate the 10 page follow up from the visit and have my lessons in place. We look forward to our next session to show off our new skills! Having a well-adjusted puppy who appreciates his marker words is priceless!!! So many thanks read more

Urban Dawgs - Cody so proud of himself at Urban Dawgs! - Pet Training Near Me - Red Bank, New Jersey

I would recommend Urban Dawgs to anyone. The two trainers- Vyolet & Drayton are amazing. I've brought both of my puppies to Urban Dawgs and continue to work with the two trainers at their play & train classes. My pups "run on batteries" and are super well-trained. You receive all the right tools to successfully train your pups while also having fun at the classes yourself! I looked forward to all of the trainings. I wish I could give them 10 stars; even if you are located a bit far from Urban Dawgs...IT IS WORTH IT! read more

Drayton Michaels is the ultimate professional when it comes to dog training. You can feel his passion and energy toward dogs. He is worth every penny!! We truly loved our experience with Drayton and would HIGHLY recommend him to everybody and anybody that is a dog owner. Thank you Drayton for your education and for all you have done for us and Maisey!! read more

Highly recommend! We had such a great experience learning the tools necessary to help our dog, Ollie, become such a success! The positive reinforcement has had a profound effect on our puppy, and we couldn't be any more grateful to Drayton and his team! Drayton is very organized, responsive, and communicative! What we and our puppy have learned is invaluable! Thanks again to Drayton and Laura for giving us the tools to help Ollie be the best he can be! We loved every minute of it!! read more

If could give this company a 0 rating, I would! My husband and I chose this company because they claim that they specialize in pit-bulls. My husband and I have a blue nose bull boxer. The trainer said that they were over-booked and that I would have to schedule 6 weeks in advance and pay the full amount ($350) a month in advance in order to keep my appointment. He proceed to call me 8 times during working hours to make sure that he received the payment far enough in advance. When I asked him if it was just a deposit, he said no because he finds that most people cancel if they don't pay the full amount. - I should have known then to cancel the appointment with this trainer! We explained through the 17 page, 250 question packet that was also required prior to our appointment that our dog is a loving, 65-pound lap dog. We also explained that our dog was a rescue and is fearful and started to show some aggressive behavior such as growing and lunging which was why my husband and I were looking for a trainer. Of course, on the first session with Drayton, our dog who was protecting us, lunged and growled at him (like we explained in our 250 questions). Just like in people, not all dogs are motivated by the same thing. He thought that throwing treats at her would make her "like" him. As a professional, he should have known that that does not work for her and she is motivated by playing and with toys. During our session the ONLY thing Drayton did was throw treats AT my dog. He continued to explain that in his experience with other dogs and how there was this one instance that he had a dog that went to bite him because he got too close to their owner and was INSIDE their car! ( he forced the elderly couple to euthanize the dog that day or he was calling animal control!). About 20 minutes in he explained that the only option we had was to euthanize our dog - what a horrible thing to hear especially when the person that is sharing this information with you has absolutely no empathy about it! He continued to explain that we needed to buy her a steak and bring her to be euthanized that night. After crying all night over the experience that we just had had after Drayton explained that our beautiful, loving and most sweetest dog was to be put down, we felt that we needed to think of an alternative route for her and bring her to the SPCA so that they could re-train her for another loving family as we felt that her protectiveness would not be able to be trained by us. When I called the SPCA, I found out that Drayton had called every rescue in NJ as well as our Vet to inform them that our dog was not "adoptable" and that she would be euthanized anyways!!!!!! The trainer explained that he was the only one who could train this dog. I think he needs to get off his high horse and look at his own fears! We had asked him for a partial refund because he did nothing for our dog other than feed her treats and tell us that we had to euthanize her. He told us that a refund was not possible, but that we had a "credit" if we decided to get another dog. If you want to give your dog a fighting chance do not use Urban Dawgs in Red Bank, New Jersey!!! read more

We took our 8 month old puppy here and met with Drayton for the initial session at the end of October. Within 30 minutes of being there we already caught his condescending tone. We stayed to give it a chance for what we thought was the benefit of our dog and unfortunately we were let down. (The entire session from the moment we got out of the car to the end, was recorded on his multi camera setup and go pro which I'm sure since has been deleted). To start, his resolution to everything we presented to him was to just keep feeding the dog treats and bribe him for his proper behavior, which I simply could have done at home myself. While the entire time of our consultation our dog chewed on bully sticks that had previously been there, and shared amongst I'm sure many dogs and polished off nearly a whole bag of treats. Right off the bat, he bashed our veterinarian who happens to be a family friend, in him helping us select Science Diet for our dog. Drayton continued to tell us that Vets are not educated anymore than 2 weeks in their schooling on nutrition and that they simply become vets because they are capable of performing surgery, "they don't know nutrition". Extremely unprofessional to belittle and discredit the dedication that our vet has put into our dog, and actually...all vets! He then wanted to observe my boyfriend put the harness on our dog to go outside for a walk, to demonstrate the pulling issue. By the way, his resolution to our dog pulling was for us to "hustle and keep up with our dog following scent"...Anyways, our harness wasn't good enough to Drayton he "did not feel safe using our harness" and preferred to use his own...as he boasts SAFETY for the dog; "safe, unsafe, and neutral" is his mantra. My dog ducked, making it difficult for the harness to be put on him, and immediately Drayton ripped the harness out of our hands, and walked away in pure frustration and anger that we couldn't get the harness on him the first try, followed by some arrogant comments. We should've left then, and to our poor judgment we stayed. I have an 85 lb. dog, very powerful and fast, for someone as educated as he claims to be, he chose to use a leash that is 1/2 inch width without ever having walked my dog and experiencing his strength. That being said, he encouraged my dog to chase after a squirrel, in my understanding to show us that he would be able to disengage the dog from this action. Instead what happened was, a pole became the divide between our dog and him, and the 1/2 width leash snapped, leaving my dog to continue his sprint into traffic on a main road in red bank. Meanwhile Drayton, myself and my boyfriend were running after and screaming for him to come back, as people were getting out of their cars to stop traffic so our dog wouldn't get hit. Stunned is not the word. Our harness was what he was so worried about, yet his leash and poor judgment almost had our dog seriously injured or worse, killed right in front of us. He expressed utter disbelief for his equipment failure and apologized to no end and seemed to be extremely concerned. But shortly after, made sure to remind us that "if we had better recall skills, we could've gotten him to come back quicker". We put our faith in this person, his company and his practices, and what we left with was a dog even worse off than when we brought him there. He has been sick since the moment we left the facility, does not seem like he feels "safe" with us and is now noticeably traumatized, irritable and anxious. As are we. We spoke with Drayton following and he has without question agreed to send us a full refund in the mail, adding "I hope I can count on your discretion"...our full refund was the only good thing we took away from this experience. read more

We loved Puppy Kindergarten at Urban Dawgs. The trainers were incredibly knowledgeable and attentive to everyone and the facility was very clean. Parking was a little challenging at times but still totally worth it. This place is also a little more expensive than other places but you really do get what you pay for. My dog is the best! read more

I recommend this place to everyone I meet that has a dog or a puppy. I got a new Deaf Dalmatian puppy at Christmas. I got her from a breeder who did not want to put her down due to her deafness, AKC requires this. Anyway, I signed a contract to have her spayed and also to go to Puppy Kindergarten. My vet recommended this place and I am so happy she did. Izzy, my pup, was so happy going to classes as she got to meet new people, new dogs and learn new things. Drayton suggested a Vibration Only collar, which I got and put on Izzy for every class. What I really liked about the training is it is a Positive approach to dog training. No scolding only rewarding all of the good things they do. Izzy loved that too. I like the idea that you focus on the positives and reward when they do what you ask them to do not choke the daylights out of them for doing something they should not. Drayton and Laura are always available via email and answer all questions that they can. I would love to take her back again, so she gets to meet more dogs her size. The classroom was very organized and we had little dogs in the front and the larger ones in the back. Izzy is a Dalmatian and is a big girl and a very busy girl, but she did extremely well!! Thank you Drayton and Laura for all you do for our pups. read more