Ashley is both a wonderful person to work with, as well as a disciplined and skilled trainer. I raised my pup Cooper under her guidance and advise, and today Cooper is a well-behaved, socialized, and healthy dog!
- L. Garbinski

I run a small, word of mouth, doggy daycare. Part of that entails matching my clients up with dog trainers or behavior specialists. I matched Ashley up with a noise phobic client. This dog was shut down the second she got out of the building. After working with Ash, Penny blossomed. In 3 years the owners have never seen their dog play in a dog run (I know not normally ok, this was an exception), Penny was able to go, have heathy zooms and playful body language. I still get choked up reliving how happy my human and dog clients were in the videos sent to the group chat. As a dog nanny, I have to be very selective of who works with my clients. If I make a bad connection between a client and a trainer, that’s a reflection of me and I can lose significant income. I do not have this worry at all when I match a client up with Ashley! You’ll have peace of mind working with her.
- Lark

I have had Saphira since she was 8 weeks old. She is a shelter puppy soo the specifics of her back story are nonexistent and her breed is a guess. She looks like a Weimaraner/Pit but her mom looks like a hound. From the very beginning Saphira was challenging. As a puppy she would run around until she passed out. She hated confinement of any kind. No crates so we improvised a playpen but even then someone had to stay with her for her to calm down. Per shelter rules she was spayed at 12 weeks and came home on a trazodone prescription. On trazodone she ran around like a drunk bouncing off walls until she tore her stitches. That was puppy Saphira. Fast forward to last year, we had tried at least 5 different medications, We had gone through so many balanced trainers and 10-week training dog programs and every single one of them failed. The more aggressive their methods, the worse my relationship with Saphira got. Through all of this she would make progress and at one point regress to the very beginning of everything I thought she had learned. When I found the force free approach after everything else failed, we struggled to find a trainer for such a challenge and a program we could afford because I had already spent thousands at that point. Then I saw on IG that Ashley was offering a discount on her services for (was it black history month) a $100 for 10-classes so I jumped on the deal. In our first meeting I layed out all the challenges we had faced and programs we had failed. I remember thinking 10 weeks isn’t nearly enough. It’s been a year since our first session and here is why Saphira is making progress even when she regresses. Ashley recognized that me and my dog were neurodivergent, we both learnt differently. The first thing that we needed was flexibility and access so we transitioned from 1 hour sessions every couple of weeks to address a set of behaviors to a Whatsapp chat where I would send videos of Saphira and Ashley responded often right away. In the chat we would discuss what was going on everyday in Saphira’s world so despite being remote Ashley has a very good idea of what Saphira is like and what she needs. I would message several times a day if Saphira displayed new behavior, liked an exercise, struggled to trust me or if it just wasn’t our day. That meant that Ashley was responding to live updates but it also meant she had to adapt exercises for us often. A combination of Saphira’s genetics, meds and past experiences made her distrustful of training and so Ashley would keep proposing adjustments until it clicked for Saphira. Progress was slow but this time when she regressed we pivoted and Ashley taught to just meet her where she is at everyday. Even if she should know by now we would just take a step back. A lot of the times it looked like we were working on 1 behavior forever but it also meant that we were working on multiple behaviors everyday. This week I was able to load all my pups in a car and go to the dog park. That meant Saphira learned to trust me even though the outdoors are scary for her. I put her on a leash and she didn’t bolt off with my shoulder the first time something grabbed her attention. It meant she could be in a car. My very scared and anxious misunderstood dog is making progress because Ashley adapted in real time, was responsive, found creative ways to adapt exercises for Saphira and took it all in stride when we had to go back to step one which happens pretty frequently. Saphira is now 3.5 years old and we share an incredible bond and Ashley is still with us. That is what Saphira needs, a long term therapist who is not fazed by all of our challenges.
- Lushik