Montanna, Jon & Louie

The team at Pack Leader Dogs in Hoboken is as good as it gets – nothing but positive experiences the past 5 months. My fiance and I brought home an adorable 9 week old puppy (Louie) in July 2015. After about a month of alternating staying home with Louie, we both had to go back to work. We decided to look into dog walkers to come a few times a day — allowing Louie to work on crate training and walking on a leash. We reached out to Steve and the Pack Leader team and started Louie with two walks a day.

Leaving Louie during the day was very hard, especially at first! Louie’s walker would text me to let me know how he’s doing, which really put me at ease. Within a few weeks we started to see some great improvements in Louie’s walks — the puppy who would run all over, lunge towards people and other dogs, zigzag and pull, was soon able to focus and walk more calmly. He’s still young (7 months now) and this is an ongoing process and something that will continue to be worked on, but it’s great to see him improving — no more zigzags, not reacting or pulling when we walk by other people.

One of the biggest improvements we’ve seen in Louie is how he walks up/down stairs. There were a few occasions when he would charge up or down the stairs, I have literally been pulled to the ground by his charging. His dog walker, Juan, noticed this issue and started to work with him on this. I was regularly avoiding the stairs with Louie and would take the elevator just because I was nervous he would charge down. When Juan mentioned he was working on this and Louie was improving, I gave the stairs another change. Louie at 6 months was walking calmly down the stairs — stopping at each landing until I gave him the command to proceed. It was extremely impressive the change in a few weeks (and also adorable as he would stop and look at me to give him the command to keep going).

I highly recommend Steve and his team to all dog owners, whether it’s for training or walks. The Pack Leader team is extremely patient and accommodating. Pack Leader provides far more than just walks — I can vouch for that based on my experience with Louie. If anyone has any questions about my experience, please feel free to reach out.