Gary Maria did an excellent job of helping my husband and me get through a difficult time with a challenging Pitbull-mix rescue dog. Since we don’t have young children, I was looking for a German Shepherd &/or Pitbull-mix because there were so many of those breeds in the shelters. One of our adult daughters had adopted a GSD rescue about a year ago & was having a great experience with her. Another close family friend also worked at a rescue with Pitbulls & had had so many positive things to say about them. After submitting many applications, I was finally contacted by a rescue agency about a 1-year-old female Pit-mix who was dog-friendly and child-friendly.

We went to meet her with our dogs, including our daughter’s German Shepherd, to make sure the rescue dog would get along with all of us. It went fantastically! And she was such a cutie! We brought Montana home with us to be the latest addition to our family.

I started noticing that this experience was going to be a challenge when I brought Montana into the backyard the next day. She started doing zoomies, but then she started growling at me (not in a friendly way) and jumping and biting at my feet & hands. I was able to distract her and got her calmed down. I was crate-training her & training her on-leash every day, as I had done effectively with all of the other dogs I had. She was doing fairly well with those things. And, she could be very sweet when she was calm. However, she would growl, lunge and bite at me whenever I would take her out to play. If I said “no,” she would back away and growl more seriously. I started to be a little afraid of her at those times, especially since she was a Pitbull-mix. I was really starting to wonder if I had made the right choice in adopting her. I just wanted a friendly, loving companion, not a Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. That’s when I started looking for a dog trainer and I was lucky enough to find Gary Maria.

Gary came to our house (we were all wearing masks) for a consultation. He has been working with all types of dogs for over 30 years. He had Montana calmly lying next to him within about 20 minutes of coming to the house. After talking with him, I realized that this was not going to be a quick, overnight solution, but it was going to be a process that he was going to teach us that would require daily work on our part and have Montana behaving well after 6 weeks. Although I was concerned about Montana’s behavior in the short-run (I must confess I didn’t want Gary to leave while I still had a little bit of fear of Montana), I knew that this would be the best solution in the long-run – we would have the tools that we needed to work with our new dog and we would also be establishing our relationship and trust with her, as opposed to sending her away to a boarding dog training school. So, we signed up for the once-a-week in-home training.

Each week, we would work on training different behaviors. Gary would listen to the problems we encountered the week before and make suggestions as to what we could do to address those issues, in addition to progressing through his training steps. By the end of the 6 weeks, Montana has turned into a really sweet, affectionate, playful, “normal” dog. She no longer jumps/growls/bites at us – she is able to play with us politely. She also plays really nicely with the other dogs in our family. We still have things that we’re working on (barking at dogs we pass when we’re in the car, being very stressed/barking when we take her to new places, etc.), but we feel like Gary has given us the tools to train Montana to improve these behaviors. And, Gary is just a phone call away to help us with any more challenging issues that might come up. We HIGHLY recommend Gary Maria to help you train your new rescue dog. He’s especially experienced with helping to bring out the great qualities in the more challenging breeds of dogs (Pitbulls, German Shepherds, etc.) that fill the shelters/rescue agencies. With your commitment to the process, Gary will help you have a wonderful outcome.

I can't recommend Gary enough. He taught me so much about my dog, how to read his emotions, how to make him feel safe, how to calm him down. My 6 weeks with Gary has made me feel so much closer to my dog, and made me a more compassionate dog mom.

I tried so many different things before going to Gary, and this is really the first thing that's stuck for us because he gives you the tools to read and understand your dog that translate far beyond teaching basic commands.

I seriously couldn't have imagined going into this how much I would get out of it and I am so so grateful I found Gary. Thank you Gary for all that you taught me and Otto!!