Zen Dog Training Somerville, Massachusetts

I had the pleasure of working with Elissa for individual training for our 3 month old puppy. She was responsive to our concerns and very clear about the path forward. She offered quick solutions to foundational puppy issues including crate training, leash walking, and hyperactivity around mealtimes. He went from not tolerating the crate for more than 3 minutes to sleeping overnight in a matter of days. I look forward to continuing our work with her to further refine our pup's behaviors. I would absolutely recommend working with Elissa through Zen Dog Training!

We are first time dog owners and Gordon's 2 hour training taught us so much that we feel confident about how to respond in most situations. We have a standard poodle puppy who is very young (9 weeks) and very curious. Gordon showed us how to build a strong bond with the little fellow while training him.

I'm a former client of Zen Dog Training and a first time dog owner, and I went to ZDT for my first training experience. I think the comics and the website are good, but I was very frustrated with the individual advice I got. Having now gone to an IAABC trainer, I realize how little ZDT explained how my dog's emotions impact the training. I also felt talked "down to" in my training sessions with ZDT. I hope this helps those considering different trainers, ZDT is not one size fits all

We did an in-home training visit with Gordon to work on some basic training with our 12-week-old puppy, and found it to be an excellent value. My husband and I learned so much from the visit, and came away with tools and reference materials that made us feel so much better equipped to train and socialize our pup. As a bonus, we've already seen some really positive behavior changes in the couple days since our session by employing the training tools that we learned in the visit. Highly recommend Zen Dog!

Would absolutely recommend working with Zen dog training! We worked with trainer Julie for our Newfoundland puppy, and after just our first two-hour session we have already learned so many helpful tricks and tips for appropriately controlling his behavior.

We were so happy to train our reactive rescue dog with Julie. She was so supportive of us as a family, had incredible knowledge of dogs, and gave the best advice. We could not have kept this dog without her guidance and support!

My family recently adopted Layla 12 week old beagle mix who was incredibly introverted and scared of everything. When we first adopted Layla she was not able to make it out of the house without shaking. With the help and guidance of Gordon and Emily (the wonderful trainers) we have been able to break Layla out of her shell and can even take her for a walk! We could not be happier with the results! We could not recommend Zen Dog Training more highly!

We just had our first in-home session with Gordon. He is a fantastic teacher and made training our best friend so much fun. We learned so many training techniques and can not wait to practice them. We start puppy classes tomorrow and can't wait to keep working with our little guy. There is no doubt we will be purchasing more in-home sessions after puppy school to continue his training. We highly recommend!

Gordon and his team are the best! We did both the group class and home visit and learned so much.

We worked with Emily on aggressive and reactive issues with our 9 month old puppy who was growling and lunging at certain strangers out of fearfulness. She was so helpful in explaining his behavior and why he was acting the way he was and showing us how to handle each situation we encountered both inside and outside. Any time we needed, she stayed longer than the 90 minutes to answer questions or talk through some issues he was still having with something we had been working on with him that week. We felt like if anything came up during the week, we could text or email her and she'd be more than willing to walk us through it or answer whatever questions we had. Our puppy made tremendous progress over the weeks we worked directly with Emily and he is still making great progress using the techniques we learned from her. She still checks in on him every few weeks to see how he's doing and if we have any questions. I definitely recommend Zen Dog and Emily in particular if you're having reactive or aggressive issues.

Zen dog training is the best. Gordon and team helped us deal with our very high energy puppy using humane techniques. Thank you for getting us to a place where we can fully enjoy our pup!

We used Zen Dog Training within the first few weeks of getting our Boston Terrier puppy. We were so happy with the results. Boston Terriers are known for being tough to train, but Gordon gave us really helpful techniques that were easy to implement (which was great for some overwhelmed new dog parents). In that initial appointment, he also put us at ease and made us feel empowered to keep training. The games he created made that easy since they are fun and easy to remember. We couldn't make it to the group training classes, but we were really happy with the 1:1 session followed by many emails with training specifics and then a follow up appointment months later. We were diligent about his "always be training" technique. The second session was really helpful to take some of the initial games to the next level and move on to more advanced moves. Finally, we were having some strange behavior at daycare that we had trouble replicating at home to try and address the problem. Gordon went above and beyond to help our puppy and we were able to address the problem. We are really pleased with our dog's behavior and how well trained she is and it's thanks to Gordon. We highly recommend to any new pet parents.

My partner and I really got a lot out of our work with both Gordon and Emily at Zen Dog. We have a very energetic dog, Rudy, and are first time dog owners so we needed a lot of help. Their visits were instructional and they left us with a lot of great tips to use on our own. Gordon helped with creating the initial plan and then Emily was the person who spent the most time with us to make sure we were successful. The real training was for us, to give us the confidence to set the boundaries we needed with our dog for us all to be happy together. Very practical trainings on how to get our walks with Rudy to work better for us and not feel like he was just dragging us around, plus learning how to interrupt his bad behavior- play biting and barking at lots of stuff- have been life-changing! And the total love that Gordon and Emily has for Rudy was so apparent that it made it easy to trust them. Emily has been great at following up with us to make sure everything is going ok and we know that we can always turn to her if we get stuck with something. We very highly recommend Zen Dog, Gordon, and Emily.

Gordon Fontaine is FANTASTIC! He visited our house twice and had spot on advice for our problem areas. Our dog has terrible separation anxiety and Gordon had laid out perfect steps for us to take as well as providing us with great resources that perfectly address the problem. During our second visit, we surprised him with having a second puppy present (with a very different personality). Gordon was able to pick up on each puppy's characteristics and adjust to both! More importantly, Gordon did a great job training us to train the pups. Such a friendly guy and huge dog lover! MOST DEFINITELY RECOMMEND!!!

UPDATE 6/17/18: If I could give 6 stars i would. My wife and I just completed the 6 session puppy class with Neil and it was fantastic. The main draw for the classes is the socialization with other young pups, but we still learned plenty from Neil that wasn't covered in our one session with Gordon. It also helps that you can ask an experienced professional as many questions as you'd like over the period of 6 weeks. Our adopted rescue is a quick learner and picked up on the obedience/potty training methods really quickly, but where the money was REALLY worth it, came when our little guy started growling out of the blue. If he was scared, uncomfortable, or just being moody at home, he could growl or even snarl at us. Both Neil and Gordon were available over phone/email for all our questions and they showed us priceless techniques that fixed that behavior almost immediately. Our little guy now knows the rules and has become great with strangers, children, and other dogs. I honestly think this training is priceless and has saved us from significant stress and pain that can come with adopting a puppy, especially a rescue that may have had bad experiences. Thank you Zen Dog! Original Review: We purchased a 2 hour in home visit with Gordon. Our experience with Gordon was awesome! (So awesome this is my first review of anything...) He was knowledgeable, friendly, and best of all, you could tell he was really passionate about dogs. Before we even had our session, he saved my wife and I by teaching us how to deal with a yelping pup in his crate. The session was informative, easy to understand, and fun! He not only taught us how to train our pup, but what the thought process/psychology behind it was as well. He supplies LOADS of very cool comics that describes and shows the owners how to implement his techniques. I can't recommend Gordon enough. To anyone that wants their own Zen Dog, I'd suggest booking Gordon right away!

We worked with Neil from Zen Dog Training and cannot say enough good things about him!! He's come over to our house for two 90-minute training sessions over the past couple months and has worked wonders with our rescue dog. All the training tips he's given us have been extremely effective and the underlying philosophy/dog psychology really makes sense to us. What has been most incredible is how available he has been to answer additional questions over email or a brief phone call in between sessions. Neil has really gone above and beyond for us, willing to take time out of his busy day to answer our questions on new behavior that our dog exhibits and implementing training tools he's shown us. If it were possible to give him 1,000 stars I would. If you are having some frustrations with your dog, I highly recommend reaching out to Neil. He has not only given us great tools but has made me feel far less stressed and more able to understand my dog's often vexing behavior. I felt hopeless about some of our dog's crazy behavior and Neil helped me see that it was possible to improve and change that behavior. Thank you Neil!

Neil has been a fantastic help! Our dog was having separation anxiety when we would leave the house which was leading to accidents. She would have these accidents even if we left for just a few minutes! Thanks to Neil and the plan he helped implement, our dog is now happy to be left alone for several hours and will be completely accident free. Neil was a great help and would even promptly respond to our questions on the weekend. We highly recommend!!

My vet referred me to this company. Called multiple times and no one returned call. Finally contacted Alana Maserve directly as she’s nearest to where I live in Lexington. I texted her March 20 and March 27 and she finally returned my text …

We had a great experience working with Elissa Carreras of Zen Dog Training with our puppy. She came to us a number of times and we even signed up for a class with her. She was like a dog whisperer and gave our family tools and confidence to be happy dog owners. I can't rate her highly enough.

We got a package of 6 lessons, and 1 in-home lesson. Nayiri, the trainer, is awesome! Course was very thorough, and she really teaches you all the tools for a new puppy. Would highly recommend anyone with a new puppy to sign up with Zen Dog Training.

I decided to hire them based on a recommendation from our Vet and from the yelp reviews. I guess I should have requested Gordon directly as he seems to have the best reviews here. We ending up signing for a package of 2 hours of training and I believe 10 hours of class training. After the initial 2 hours, we were looking forward to our class. The trainer promised to send me the schedule next day.They never emailed us the class schedule. Then on Friday night, we were informed the start date is next day. When I asked to move the start of the class next month, they denied that. So I asked for a refund of the class tuition then. We have not seen our refund check yet for almost 30 days now. They keep giving excuses and the trainer has stopped answering text messages. It looks like I will have to take my case to small claims court to get my money back.