Bella and Willow

This picture wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Helen and her staff at No Monkey Business.  Bella, the reddish retriever mix, is a 8 year old rescue.  Willow is a one year old Australian Shepherd.  We got Willow at nine weeks old.  Bella was not a fan.  Bella almost instantly started over-correcting Willow for any infraction.  This led to gates and separation in our house and a lot of tension.  I called and set up an appointment with Helen for an evaluation with Bella.  Helen was very honest and upfront with me, she gave me work to do at home with both Bella and Willow.  She also told me the biggest factor in this will be time, give it time – time for Bella to adapt and time for Willow to grow up.  We worked with Helen individually and we signed Willow up for puppy classes and took her to puppy play group.  We continued working it’s Bella and then enrolled both dogs in classes together.  Ten months later we now have the dogs together almost all day together.  Bella still requires extra space, but because of all the work we have done with both of them Willow is able to respect that.  We have experienced Helen’s training with both an older dog with some baggage, and a puppy with a clean slate.  We will be taking down gates soon and the tension in the house is long gone thanks to Helen!