Lily

When we adopted our first dog, she was just under 6 months old, and came from a very different home in a rural location, to live with us, in a city. As Lily is our first dog, we decided we would like some professional help just to make sure that we were doing the right things. Linnea helped us learn how to read Lily’s body language, understand her better and respond appropriately. We have been very fortunate and never had any real difficulties with Lily, but there were lots of everyday behaviours we wanted to improve. Lily used to constantly pull on the lead and whine as she became frustrated about this, which still happens occasionally, but now, if I get her in the right frame of mind, we can walk through a busy park, or past birds/cats in the street, without even having a lead on! We have done lots of work on calmness and frustration, which I don’t think we even understood was the issue before working with Linnea.

Friends and family often comment on how well behaved Lily is, which is lovely to hear, and reminds us how hard we have all worked! It’s often easy for us to forget how much Lily, and we, have learned and changed over time, and how things we now take for granted are behaviours and skills that we have all worked on. There are lots of behaviours that we want to continue to improve/work on, but we now feel comfortable in how to achieve this.

Linnea is so generous with her time, often spending extra time with us and always being available for extra support or guidance if we needed it. It’s reassuring to know there is someone who will understand, and most likely have a remarkably simple solution, to any issues we face with our dog. We first made contact with Walk and Train Edinburgh in 2015, and still have contact and support from them now!

Walk and Train Edinburgh has also allowed us to access a whole other community of dogs and their people, new walks, different management techniques and advice about anything and everything dog related! Although our initial intent had just been to make sure we understood the basics, thanks to Walk and Train Edinburgh, we have a happy, relaxed dog, who we can understand and effectively communicate with. We are always recommending them to anyone who is thinking about getting a dog, and genuinely think getting in touch with Walk and Train Edinburgh is one of the best decisions we made since getting a dog!

-Frankie