My boyfriend, Kyle, and I agreed to get a puppy last year, but we had disagreements on what breed. We first thought that we’d get a Border Collie, because his parents had one. We had just moved into a townhouse, and I thought we should get a smaller dog. There were so many breeds to choose from! After searching and searching through different breeds, we ended up agreeing on a Border.

I had done a lot of research on competitive dog sports and we knew we’d be able to keep our Border Collies’ mind working, by getting her involved in some of those activities.

We contacted a breeder in Washington that we really liked in February, and we were lucky to get a little girl from an April litter. I knew that she would have to have a strong obedience background so, I contacted Sit Happens Dog Training a few weeks before we got our puppy. Kyle was a definite skeptic. He had grown up with a Border Collie, that he had mostly trained himself.

Even before our little girl came home, Jeff was helping us get ready for house training. We had our first in-home training session 1 week after bringing Marley home. After 1 hour with Jeff, Kyle was pretty impressed.

I loved being able to take my 10 week old puppy to a family barbeque and have her on her best behavior. My family definitely wouldn’t have believed it, if they hadn’t seen it. Everywhere we went people couldn’t believe how well behaved our puppy was.

Not everything was easy. We did have some issues. Marley went through a stage where she thought she was the “boss” with me. Biting me, growling. I spoke to Jeff and within a couple of weeks we had nipped that in the bud.

Marley also had issues with dogs that came charging to play with her. She would bolt, and even on leash, she would practically take my arm off. She wouldn’t listen, she would just run, whimpering. Again I spoke to Jeff, and again his advice helped so much! Every now and then, she’ll get spooked about a dog charging her way, but now we know how to calmly handle her so she doesn’t run away in a panic.

Marley has started her beginner Agility classes and her obedience training has helped so much. She is just over a year old, and we haven’t had to change our own lives to accommodate our dog.

Sit Happens has made our first year with our dog so easy and we can’t thank them enough! We are excited to get a second dog to train with the Sit Happens Team!