Testimonials

Greater Boston Dog Training is the best. Zephyr has come over to my house three times and in the first lesson he taught me and the dogs heal and sit. I can walk both dogs at the same time without them pulling me across the street. We are now working on the barking, jumping and stay. My dogs are reformed. We are all much happier because of Zephyr. Thank you.!!!!

I met Zephyr Clarke-Dolberg in the spring of 2007 first thing I noticed about him is his calm assertive personality when dealing with people. As I got to know him I realized that Zephyr has an innate ability with dogs, his instincts with dogs are very rare. I spent time with Zephyr teaching him formal dog training, it was truly a terrific experience. Most people who learn how to train dogs do not naturally possess the instincts Zephyr has, and usually it takes them a long time to develop it. Zephyr also had the opportunity to prove himself with large aggressive dogs living in a shelter environment. He certainly proved his ability to work with these dogs in a positive way, to rehabilitate and turn them into good canine citizens.

I wholeheartedly recommend Zephyr Clarke-Dolberg, yours for better dogs

My wife and I adopted a deaf terrier whippet mix who was rescued from Puerto Rico. After a few weeks of having her we started to see issues of aggression towards basically anyone that she met other then my wife an I. Heartbroken we called the shelter and considered bringing her back. They sent us to a specialist who prescribed her medicine and sent us on our way. The behavior didn’t change and again we thought about giving Alba up. However we wanted to take one more chance since Alba had truly become a part of our family, enter Zephyr at Greater Boston Dog Training. He truly invested himself immediately in our case and began to think of everything to try to help Alba out. We have been working with him now for 5 sessions and although the process has been extremely difficult at times we have begun to see major improvements in her behavior. With his help Alba can now be around other members of our family and has even been walked around on leash by other members of the family. Zephyr is truly amazing with dogs and his never give up attitude is unreal especially seeing how frustrating our case has been. He truly makes you feel like he will stop at nothing to fix the troublesome behavior and always considers your feelings as well as the dog’s in all of his training methods. We were always so heartbroken seeing Alba’s aggression since she is such an amazing dog with us and we have become so attached to her and love having her as a part of our family. Zephyr made us feel like his number one priority was fixing this behavior so that we can keep Alba in our family. He has always made himself available to answer our questions and has spent plenty of time on the phone listening to our concerns and trying to find solutions to put our nerves at ease. I would recommend him as highly as anyone I have ever worked with in any field at all.

I’m a Veteran who was in need of an Emotional Support dog Zephyr was very informative and was able to guide me with caring and effective methods. He took very good care of my furry best friend for a whole month. Zephyr always made sure that I was comfortable and that I knew the command cues effectively. This has allowed me to continue with conditioning and training. He also provided many insights and tips. I’ve always followed what Zephyr has said from Day 1 and what I achieved, through the help of Zephyr, is immaculate results for a adolescent Siberian Husky.

We want to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to you for the amazing training you have provided to us & to Bernie. We were so excited to add a puppy to our family and it was very important for our busy family of five to have a well mannered & socialized dog . We feel so very fortunate to have benefited from your expertise starting when Bernie was just 9 weeks old . The tips & knowledge you imparted to us during those first early weeks proved invaluable & have allowed us to fully enjoy & understand her, thank you. As the weeks & months have passed , your talents have allowed our family to have such a rewarding relationship with Bernie. We are so happy to have a dog that we are enjoying both inside our home & out . She walks, heels , sits and stays on command ( and enjoys showing off her skills). It’s a pleasure to take her on a walk or watch the kids walking her without being pulled around. Thank you for helping make the well mannered puppy we imagined a reality.

In December 2010, I enrolled my six (6) month old Boxer puppy “Charlie” in Zephyr’s 30-day in-kennel service dog-training program. After a short 4-weeks, Charlie returned into an extraordinarily obedient and well-mannered dog fluent in Hebrew. He mastered his individually trained tasks along with advanced obedience skills, on and off leash, in response to both Hebrew verbal commands and hand signals.

The commands he mastered were “Heel, Auto-Sit, Sit-Stay, Come, Down, Sit, Down-Stay, Drop it, Leave it, Stand, Emergency Down, Release, and Place” The Charlie also acquired proper social-behavior skills which included no aggressive behavior towards people or other animals such as barking, biting, snapping, snarling, growling and/or lunging, no soliciting food or petting from other people, and no sniffing merchandise or people or intruding into another dog’s space. Proper socialization also included tolerating strange sights, sounds, odors etc. in a wide variety of public settings, walking calmly on and off leash, no unruly behavior or unnecessary vocalizations in public settings, and no urinating or defecating in public unless given the “release” command.

Charlie was also trained as a service animal in the task of standing and bracing the handler in the event that he or she loses balance. He remains standing in the event that the handler falls and requires the dog’s support to rise. Once the handler rises, the Charlie does not move until the handler feels comfortable and begins to walk.

Today, Charlie is 5 years old and still recalls all of his commands. He plays with my 20-month old daughter calmly and is very tolerant of her. I will undoubtedly send my next dog to Zephyr. He is a very talented and hardworking individual.

We were very happy to bring home Juno, our new puppy, but her exuberant personality got us worrying. Would we be able to get her to listen, to walk on a leash, and to stop from constantly jumping up?

We weren’t sure, but Zephyr turned out to be an exceptional trainer. He taught the dog very well, and taught us to work with her. He was firm but patient. His combination of kindness and expertise put everyone at ease (Juno included) and he gave us the skills and confidence we needed as owners. He helped us become a family!

Very happy that we found Zephyr! We had a five month old Shiba Inu puppy Bolt who was doing really well, but then started getting quite aggressive with the food guarding and space guarding, and out of control with the play biting as he went into adolescence. I was really becoming afraid of him and worried. We have read so many dog training websites etc but we weren’t successful, and I wanted to nip those behaviors in the bud before they became too dangerous. A co-worker of mine is having great success with her dog trainer in RI, so I called him, however Boston was out of his range– but thankfully he referred me to Zephyr, who recently returned to the Boston area and who actually was his teacher.

Zephyr came out for our first session and he was definitely an expert, patient, confident, and assuring. I realized that on our own, with our inexperience with this kind of dog personality, we couldn’t have taken the obedience training to the next level like our little puppy needed. We were so thankful to have found Zephyr, that he could share his experience and skills to help us out, and show us the tools we needed to teach Bolt how to make better behavior decisions. It definitely made a huge difference in just one night. Bolt is very strong-willed as shibas are known to be, and for us, we needed more advice to make sure we could help our puppy continue on the right path. Coincidentally we had already had a vacation planned the next week, and so we decided to do one of the training courses and have Bolt stay with Zephyr for 10 days.

He came back from “boot camp” all freshly bathed with nails trimmed, and demonstrated his newly learned commands to our delight. I was especially thrilled to see his progress in Drop it and Leave it, and he was Heeling like a pro! that’s his best success. Zephyr then spent almost two hours teaching us everything he did and how to keep working on the training. It’s a lot more fun to walk him now when he isn’t out of control. Of course he isn’t perfect yet, we have to continue the training and the practice every day.

Bolt is apparently very quirky with his food, and we definitely have work still to do. But now we have a strong foundation to build on for continuing the obedience training, and that’s exactly what we needed. I was feeling a bit desperate before with all the challenges we had to work on with Bolt, but now we see a lot more of the sweet side of our puppy again. I am determined to figure this dog out, and now there is hope! We will have a follow up visit from Zephyr with Bolt in a week or so as part of the training course, and we are looking forward to seeing Bolt grow up happy, healthy, and safe. It’s just as much about training the guardians as it is the dog, and Zephyr is good at both.

I really can’t say enough great things about Zephyr!! Here is my experience, I hope it can be of help to you. I have an 11 month old mountain cur/retriever mix rescue (Daisy-Belle from Tenn) who had a rough start to life. She is extremely fearful of loud unfamiliar noises, especially cars, due to the circumstances in which her litter was abandoned. I quickly found out I just did not have the skills to help her overcome her fears to be able to go on a normal walk. I actually had met Zephyr one day while at the dog groomers, I told him all about her anxiety issues. He said that he could absolutely help, with either sessions or overnight board & train. After some thought, I choose the week of boarding and training. While I was going to miss her, I knew she was going to need the consistency of being with him for a week to get the best results.

Boy was that the right choice!!!! She came back a whole different girl!! She’s not perfect, I don’t want to false advertise, but she is 80-90% better than she was! She walks with much more confidence now, and is in general less fearful. There really was just so much to life she was afraid of, Zephyr took the time to work with her in so many difference settings and situations over that week to get her to overcome her fear of cars and now she walks beautifully on a leash! I would have been happy with that but I got so much more. He understood she is a sensitive girl, he gave her the love and praise she deserved, so she came home being able to sit, lay down, stay, and heal/walk on a leash. For our follow-up he showed me how to teach her go to your crate/bed. Just a few tries and she already has it!!

I will be practicing and look forward to a future sessions to work on distance and e-collar training. I am hoping my little girl will be a therapy dog someday, and with Zephyr & GBDT’s help we will get there! You don’t have to take my word for it, the proof is in the happy well behaved pups! I recommend getting a consult with him if you are unsure! You will be glad you did.

We were exceptionally happy working with Zephyr to bring our English Bulldog into a friendlier mindset (he randomly lunged at people, especially men). Zephyr not only trained the dog, but he trained us in how to handle him – how to make sure we don’t transfer our anxieties to the dog and how to handle situations in which we anticipate a problem and situations in which we are surprised by them. Zephyr has a wealth of knowledge, patience and a great sense of humor – all of which came in handy! He is also truly a dog lover and it makes all the difference. We’d heartily recommend Zephyr and Greater Boston Dog Training.

To anyone that is experiencing issues with your dog that you think cannot be corrected, I would recommend contacting Zephyr Clarke-Dolberg of Greater Boston Dog Training.

I’ve recently become a first time grandmother (and a proud one at that). My son and his wife both work full time so I offered to watch little Nicholas on a full time basis so that he’s not with strangers 5 days a week for daycare. Now, the problem I have (or should I say “had”) is that I also own a dog (Jack Russell named Maxie). She is 10 years old and still has the energy of a young puppy. She was so hyper and energetic around the baby that I was afraid she would scratch or nip at the baby. She cried when the baby cried and was always at my feet jumping up to reach the baby in my arms while I would be walking with him. She was so fixated on the baby that she would totally ignore me or anyone else and just run and run around the baby jumping up trying to lick him (and she would do this for hours). It got to a point where I was contemplating having to do something drastic like finding a new family for Maxie (oh, how heartbreaking it was to even think that). My son called Zephyr to come to the house and train Maxie.

It’s only been 1 session so far (I’m not sure if a 2nd session will even be needed) and Zephyr was able to not only help train Maxie, but also trained/educated me on how to properly exercise Maxie (both mentally and physically). Zephyr gave me the knowledge and tools to use to not only exercise Maxie, but to also correct her behavior before she gets to the “hyper” point. Zephyr came prepared with different tools to use and took his time answering all of my questions and provided detailed explanations. He probably stayed a lot longer than the session typically lasts, but at no time was he rushing anything.

It’s only been 3 days so far, but the difference is unbelievable!!! It’s not to say this was magical or anything, there’s still some work I have to do, but so far the work is well worth the results.

Thanks Zephyr for helping me,

My six month old mini labradoodle puppy has learned to sit, stay, come and heel on a loose leash in just three sessions with Zephyr. He is also very good at training me, as her owner, which is the real secret to the task. I highly recommend Greater Boston Dog Training