Tucker, the Pointer Mix

Margaret Perry
Elliston, VA

Megan helped me immeasurably to understand Tucker's triggers and what I was unintentionally doing to exacerbate the issues. She gave me specific things to do to help Tucker and would check back to monitor his progress. I have had to make permanent changes in how I 'parent' Tucker - some of his behavior is instinct-driven and I must protect him from those triggers (and those triggers from him), but much of his behavior was shapeable, and Megan was able to differentiate between the two and help me target those things I could affect and gave me ideas for how to minimize his instinct-driven triggers.

What I especially liked was that she didn't try to control every bit of how we did things. Her assessment was very thorough, but when she would ask about something (like feeding him or where he sleeps) and we would ask "Is that okay? Should we do it differently?" she would reply that it probably didn't matter. Often I hear of trainers who want to control everything the owner does with the dog. Megan is so much more than a trainer - she is an animal behaviorist- and understands there are many ways to live with dogs/animals and not everything is important to the behavior she is trying to affect. I have only good things to say about her.