We turned to Bark Busters for help when our dog developed reactivity around other dogs. The techniques they teach, saying "BAAH" and jerking the lead do work and initially, I was impressed by how quickly our dog stopped barking and lunging, and like many others, I left a positive review right away (which they strongly encourage you to do).However, over time I realised that though this technique worked and stopped him from barking and lunging at other dogs it didn’t actually fix the problem and he was still not able to socialise with other dogs like he was previously and the behaviours they teach you to look out for, i.e. lip licking, ears back, head down are not signs of obedience, but signs of anxiety and stress. A big red flag is that there was no effort to understand the root cause of why he was behaving that way. He tried to claim our dog has bursts of energy simply because he barked when someone entered the property - which is normal dog behavior. He then attributed this to our dog’s diet. While it’s true that kibble contains preservatives, we own a very lazy Bullmastiff who goes to sleep straight after eating. Interestingly, despite being told not to mention diet in reviews, a significant portion of the training session focused on exactly that. He strongly recommended feeding dogs only chicken carcasses — which isn’t even a nutritionally balanced BARF meal!!!! He also claimed that feeding our dog kangaroo meat would make him smell like one (lol what!?) and cause high blood pressure (despite kangaroo being one of the leanest meats). To push a diet on dogs when you are by no means qualified is extremely detrimental hence why they specifically tell you to not write about it in your review.Don’t be fooled by the amount of positive reviews like I was! While fear-based training works it can damage the bond you have with your dog, particularly if they are rescues and have been abused by the previous owners! It is a very outdated way of training and there’s a lot of research coming out showing that positive reinforcement is not only more humane, but also more effective in the long term. Unfortunately there are a lot of dodgy dog trainers out there, I would look out for accreditation on their websites (which is not existent on bark busters’ website)
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