First and foremost, our hearts go out to Vladae and his sweet Ukrainian wife Antonina during this terrible conflict in Eastern Europe. I can only imagine how stressful this must be. Sending all of our love to you and your family and Ukraine!

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If I could do it all over again, I would’ve gone with SoCal Dog Training from the start. Maple is an English Shepherd that has been in training since she was fully vaccinated. My partner is quadriplegic, using a wheelchair to get around, and could greatly benefit from a service dog. We worked with a breeder and brought our girl home with the plan to train her service tasks and be a companion on all of our adventures together. She is so smart, but also very sensitive.

We opted to start with a positive reinforcement-based company and used clicker-training with moderate success. She loves learning new things this way, but we couldn’t get her excitement around other pups under control. We were told that it would get better with time and exposure, so we kept at it. Unfortunately, she did not improve. A few months later, when she required a barrier between her and the other puppies, we knew we need to find another method.

I reached out to SoCal dog training when Maple was 6 months old. By that point, we’d given up on the possibility of training her for service. My partner and I had already tried three training facilities. The last one said it would take years of hard work for her to be OK around other dogs. She was so young and I couldn’t believe how little progress she’d made. Every walk was a nightmare -- dodging other dogs, pulling at the leash, and apologizing while she barked and growled. Words like “aggressive” and “reactive” were already being used to describe our puppy, and we were starting to feel like we’d never find somebody who could see her the way we do.

When Vladae heard about her issues during the consultation, he didn’t make big promises but sounded optimistic, and gave us some homework to prepare her. When we finally met for the first time, she was 9 1/2 months old and still couldn’t be near another dog on leash. He had her happily trotting by his side within 20 minutes!! I couldn’t believe it! And by the end of the lesson, I was doing it myself! He explained to me that she needed a combination of positive reinforcement and gentle firmness. Maple wasn’t “aggressive” – she was anxious and sensitive. She needed to build confidence.

He was right, too. I thought she had been socialized as a puppy, but it was nowhere near Vladae’s standards. He showed us how much more we could be doing to give her the best life possible. His understanding of dog psychology and ability to communicate with them is undeniable. As we did our homework and had more lessons, Maple made huge strides and was much happier overall. She lived with him for two weeks, where he treated her like a member of his family and gave us constant updates. When camp was over, we met in a crowded place with several dogs walking around. We took Maple off-leash, and she was able to pass all of them like they weren’t even there!!

We are so happy we found SoCal Dog Training. Every day we take our girl out in public to stores, parks, and busy places without any issues. English Shepherds need a job, and she’s so happy when she is working with us. She’s finally the dog we always hope for and we couldn’t be more grateful. We still send Vladae regular updates and he is always so excited to see her. Thank you for teaching us to communicate with our girl and for building her confidence! I don’t know where we’d be without your help!!

We are so very grateful to have been able to get Vladae to train us train our dog that we adopted from South Korea. He arrived very insecure and wanted to attack everything. Now he walks just behind our left foot, goes to his "place" when told, goes to the malls and outdoor restaurants. We can now take him anywhere. Thank you SoCal Dog Training and the best people trainer for dogs!! Trust the trainer, trust the process, do your homework and live the best life!

UPDATE: I need to let you know that Vladae at SoCal Dog Training is the most effective way to train your dogs! If you are lucky enough to have landed on these reviews you only need to know 1 thing: The best results are from the work you put in to the training. You need to pick the trainer that works well with you. Just make the call, Vladae will calm you down so you can train your dog. We went back to Vladae for a maintenance appointment after almost a year. We had some small things to work out and within 5 MINUTES we were back on track! Seriously if you want your dog to look to you, love you even more, walk by you, understand you, be good at the vet, call them.

We were going on a vacation when we decided to enroll our 6 year old Labrador Retriever on a Private bootcamp with Vladae. We only had a few days notice of booking before our trip, but Vladae still accommodated our dog.

Our dog had a previous 2week board and train with another trainer, but we never saw a dramatic improvement. The only thing our dog learned was the command “sit”. Our yellow lab is very friendly to everybody to the extent that he always pulls and wants to jump on every dog and person he sees whenever we take him for a walk. Walking him hasn’t been very easy.

During his private bootcamp with Vladae at his home. He was treated like their own family. We received photos, videos and updates on a daily basis even we’re overseas which we appreciate a lot.

When it’s time to pick up our dear Walter(our dog) he allocated about 2 hours of his time to instruct my husband and teach him his ways of training our dog. To our surprise our Walter isn’t the same dog that we left with him 2 weeks prior. Our very hyperactive dog became a service dog that we can walk OFF-LEASH! Isn’t that amazing?

Vladae is heaven sent to our family, not mentioning he considers us his family too. I would say he’s very strict, but that’s what you would expect from a world-class trainer; but in the end, everything will be worth it. But of course, it won’t stop there; as the owners of our dog have the responsibility to continue what Vladae has started, we have to follow and do the homework he gives us. He follows up all the time on our progress with our dog. We love Vladae and our family is very grateful for Vladae! He truly is a Russian Dig wizard, our Walter is the proof to it!