Oh and he is a social dog. At the rescue he was from he was out with a several female dogs. He's also good with my other dog, Misha the 8yr old Husky.

I'd like him to be social because I want to be a trainer eventually. I'd love to foster some dogs, and eventually want to get a Malinois or 2... or 3.

Sarge is SUPER energetic, and he plays quite rough. He's a wrestle-type of dog, whereas my Husky is a chase-me-type of dog.

If all else fails, I just want him to be able to walk past other dogs without being reactive. In a previous post I put up, I was complaining about him pulling on leash, this is all resolved and he heals very nicely. However, he sees another dog and it gets him very excited, making it hard to get him back in 'the zone'.

I haven't had a chance to check out the link, but I had to at least say "whew" that "They believe in training the owner to train the dog."

Going from where he is now to "social" is probably unrealistic, but "If all else fails, I just want him to be able to walk past other dogs without being reactive," with work, is a goal to work toward.

All JMO!

Red flags to me: They only work with dog until they are 5 years of age. A "5 year of age" cut-off seems strange to me.

They also say that the bully breeds are "more stubborn" and need a different sort of training. I personally think that most/many of the bully breeds are much more biddeable than many others. What "different" training do the bullies need?

I would be really interested in their reasoning for limiting their training to dogs 5 years of age and younger. In my lifetime, I have adopted 3 dogs who were older than 5 and had no difficulty finding places willing to let me me train. And my 3 dogs were eager and successful learners.

5 years of age is barely a mature dog in some breeds. My parents 10 year old Boxer is the training genius in the pack. I'd pass these people by. They just seem a bit "off".

"Within the 4 weeks you will be taught how to correct your dog correctly, sit, drop, come, stay and leash work."

Granted they're an hour each and homework is expected in between but 4 weeks is still a short time to learn all that.

I thought that age cut-off was strange too... I'll have to ask them about it.

It does say that the classes go for 1hr but apparently it often goes overtime. They also offer life-time support.

The quote of the bully breeds - They do a lot of drive-work with the bully breeds, which is unusual in my city; most trainers avoid drive (except food drive) or correct it out of the dog, especially with Pits and the like.

After perusing the link, I think I have an idea of why they have a cut-off age.

When a professional trainer takes on an older dog, it almost always involves untraining some behaviors, whether it be unchecked bad habits, misguided training, or an older dog with no training. Some dog owners are unrealistic in their expectations. They bring a 7yo untrained dog who has been conditioned to be a PITA, yet they expect you to train him in the amount of time and AT THE SAME COST that you advertise for training a young dog. These owners can be very demanding and unreasonable.

Master trainers usually take the opposite approach and advertise that they specialize in problem behavior, and that's who should be training older dogs; someone with the patience to deal with both dog and owner. This doesn't come cheap, though, and these owners will tell you up front that such a prospect will cost much more to train than a green dog.

From what I see on the website, this seems to be a younger business that's trying to grow through volume, and they've pbly made the choice to deal with less problems to keep the business growing at a steady pace.

I'd be more concerned with lack of a facility. Are they training on the fly? What's up with that?

I honestly like the idea of training without a dedicated facility. The trainer I work with does have a site but we often train out in public places. I like the opportunity to do training around varying distractions and the fresh environments keep it interesting. Of course, we also train at home and at their site so we do have low distraction locations we use.

We do some remote training, as well.

When evaluating a business that I will potentially patronize, one of the things I consider is how the business is domiciled. Touring the home base gives me added perception into the working mechanisms of a business. Having a home gives a business more of a sense of stability.

In my experience with bully breeds they've been overly soft dogs who need a gentle hand and are EXTREMELY eager to please. The only stubborn ones I ran into were known rott or rott mixes.

My own experience of bully breeds is they are very slow to mature, especially the males, and are spooked quite easily by unexpected occurrences; we have had some snow days this week and there have been kids over the field we use, I had a small kid run up to my big boy the other day shouting could he stroke the doggy, I shouted NO DO NOT TOUCH THE DOG, and while all 4 of them stopped dead in their tracks and sat, Kiaser and Sugar were en guard and freaked out, I moved straight on and they relaxed, but their reaction tells me they have a lot of maturing to do.

As we all know, a fearful dog can be a bit of a liability, and I never purposefully go into situations that are going to put them in a situation that is going to lead to an accident that could have been avoided.