I have been working with Nayiri since we adopted our mix-breed dog as a young puppy a little over a year ago. As I have no experience with dog-training, I have greatly appreciated Nayiri's supportive, patient, and clear advice. Nayiri was able to help us with teaching basic commands, as well as to address issues particular to our dog and family. She also helped us to recognize "bad habits" which were developing, which we had overlooked. Nayiri consistently promoted positive reinforcement, rather than a more punitive training style. Yet, she also helped us to integrate firm, and clear directions when our dog was "testing" us. Nayiri has even worked patiently with my two children, and taught them fun games to play with our dog. She has been extremely flexible about scheduling, has answered questions via email, and provided us with written information.

We adopted our puppy, Bailey, in May 2011 at 3 months old and immediately started looking for a trainer. What I loved most about Zen Dog training is that they offer in home one-on-one training unlike some other places I had looked into. They also offered night/weekend training which was exactly what we needed. Also, the initial phone consultation was a great preview of what to expect. We signed up for the Perfect Pup package that gave us two visits lasting 2 hours each. Definitely worth it! We had Nayiri who was an absolute joy to work with. You could tell she had a great love for dogs! As soon as she entered our home and Bailey raced to 'greet' (i.e. jump on) her she was in training mode yet was still able to do the initial meet/greet with us. Nayiri took the time to listen to our specific concerns as well as tell us about common puppy issues and what to expect since this was the first time either of us had a dog under the age of 1. Nayiri showed us fun ways to teach Bailey common commands and how to advance once he got the hang of it. It was great that there wasn't a cookie cutter program; everything was tailored to what we wanted to achieve. We received great training material as a reminder once she left as well as access to their online site with an abundance of training videos and info for all stages of a dog’s life. Nayiri was extremely flexible in terms of setting up the follow up appointment which we had to reschedule on our end a couple of times due to work conflicts. Naryiri was available through email for any follow up questions/concerns we had and responded quickly with advice which was helpful as we continued our training. The follow up meeting was great. We were able to discuss all the things that had happened with training and what we still needed to work on. Nayiri also gave suggestions on some next steps she thought Bailey was ready for. We recommend her to anyone who would like to train their dog and will definitely keep her info handy just in case we feel the need for additional training in the future. We definitely lucked out finding this service!

I enrolled our 11 week old Bernese puppy in Zen Dog's puppy kindergarten class taught by Nayiri. We had a wonderful experience! Charlie learned his basic manners; sit, stay, walk on a leash, down, leave it, etc. Nayiri's positive reinforcement and praise helped to not only train our pup, but how to make us better owners and trainers as well. The class size was small, I believe there were 5 pups in our class, so each dog got a lot of training as well as socialization. Every class ends with a small packet to take home that recaps the lessons taught that week, so it is a nice resource to look at when you need reminders. I would highly recommend Nayiri's classes at Zen Dog, it really helped us and our pup! We are putting him in the advanced puppy class coming this spring.