Maher and Hound Dog Training & Behaviour

Otis & I attended Karens Happy Gundog Training and had a great time! Otis struggled with keeping his attention on me during walks, his recall and his excitement reactivity towards dogs. Karen provided all the tools to help us work on these areas plus additional fun games and tricks to teach Otis to help work on his engagement overall. His recall improved straight away and is continuing to get better every single day, as is his reactivity. We work on Otis every single walk and continue to practice the different tools Karen has given us.
Apr 29th, 2023

Highly recommend Maher and Hound Training. Good, clear and practical advice which helped us address the issues we were having with our dog from our first session with Karen. Our English Setter is now engaged and motivated by her training. She and we are much happier! Thank you Karen.
Jan 23rd, 2023

Karen has supported the rescue and rehoming work Ive been involved in for a number of years now and has provided fantastic direction, guidance and advice for many of our dogs and their adopters. She has a very patient, understanding approach and understands the differences from one dog to the next, and how its never a one size fits all deal when it comes to training and behaviour modification. She spends a lot of time getting to know the dog, their triggers, what motivates them, and why they behave in a certain way before explaining what will work best for the particular dog in question. She is non-judgmental, kind and very knowledgeable. Despite her busy schedule Karen always makes time for my questions and queries as Im sure she does for all of her clients and I wouldnt hesitate to recommend her services to any of my adopters, friends or family needing behavioural support for their dogs. Five star Wonder Woman!
Apr 28th, 2023

Without Karen Im not sure our first year with Buddy the energetic show cocker would have been so fun or manageable. Buddys very first time exploring outside was to see Karen for a training session, and hes as excited to see her now as he was then! We started with puppy training learning lots of invaluable training exercises, which we are reaping the benefits of now such as walking on and off lead. One of the key things we continue to learn is how to understand Buddys body language to ensure he is comfortable in various situations from at home to being out and about and meeting other dogs. We loved the puppy training so much we continued on with pet gundog and scent detection sessions all of which Buddy has loved and these skills have become part of our daily routine. Karen is so knowledgable, has such a lovely training style and really cares about each individual dog - we couldnt recommend her enough. Were not sure who loves the training sessions more, us or Buddy!
Feb 2nd, 2023

Initially I booked a group of pet gundog training sessions to do something fun with our first rescue dog, Spike, but these sessions quickly turned into so much more including improving eye contact during walks, learning an emergency stop, general proofing of cues, a reliable "this way", food motivation, behaviour modification for alert barking and even scentwork with Iris whom we adopted during the course of these sessions. Spike and Iris had so much fun during their individual sessions eagerly returning to my side to learn more whilst Karen provided clear and detailed instructions via Zoom. As Karen & I live on opposite sides of the UK I'm so grateful that Zoom was possible and I can confirm training absolutely works via Zoom! When we fostered Iris, I discussed her prey drive with Karen and by exchanging videos she started looking at underlying reasons and explained the emotions that Iris was experiencing in certain environments. Karen came up with a plan of action which contributed to us adopting Iris a few months later. Throughout the last few months I've found it invaluable being able to describe a behaviour and Karen would immediately have an idea to prevent rehearsal by managing the environment, working on changing the default behavioural response whilst simultaneously reassuring us humans as well. I was in utter despair at Spike & Iris' alert barking when we moved house as this was a new behaviour we hadn't anticipated. It's still not perfect, but it is infinitely better and the "Thank you" protocol that we learnt specifically for this works wonders. Karen is accredited with IMDT as a behaviouralist which my vet is very happy about as it demonstrates that Karen is formally qualified, completes Continued Professional Development, only uses positive reinforcement methods and, it goes without saying, is very knowledgeable and experienced. I highly recommend Karen and will definitely be booking further sessions!
Jan 21st, 2023