The Original Dog House

Dear David,

We would lile to take this oppor­tu­nity to thank you and your staff at The Orig­i­nal Dog House for 5 years fo great ser­vice. Every­one at The Orig­i­nal Dog House has been extremely pro­fes­sional over the years and we have always felt con­fi­dent leav­ing Kai­ley in your care. Kai­ley always enjoys her vis­its to The Orig­i­nal Dog House. Her tail starts wag­ging when i men­tion that she will be vis­it­ing and it doesn’t stop until she col­lapses at home after a fun day with h er friends. We appre­ci­ate all of your efforts in mak­ing our first “baby” happy and we l;ook for­ward to bring­ing kai­ley back for many more years.

Regards,

Julia & Justin Quigg

Shaylea (who will be three in Feb­ru­ary) has been com­ing to The Orig­i­nal Dog House since she was a puppy. I’ve never writ­ten a tes­ti­mo­nial before and really don’t know where to start but to sim­ply say, how grate­ful I am.

Our fam­ily con­sisted of our beloved dog Chelsey, a majes­tic Golden Retriever who passed away at the age of 14, and Tiger our 9 year old. Tiger missed his play­mate and we decided we would love to have another golden.

Shaylea, “the ever ready bunny” never tired. She had plenty of walks, played with Tiger, but she never tired. She had plenty of walks, played with Tiger, but she never slept! Even though I was an expe­ri­enced dog owner; I could not pro­vide for Shaylea what she needed. She def­i­nitely had an Alpha Per­son­al­ity and non stop energy.

I started look­ing into Dog­gie Day Care (for my san­ity) but after 4 months of check­ing almost every facil­ity – noth­ing met my stan­dard. Pro­fes­sional, edu­cated staff, clean­li­ness, web­cam, rub­ber­ized floor­ing, were some of the things I was look­ing for and at The Orig­i­nal Dog House I found it.

With David’s exper­tise; his patience and kind­ness, he helped me to become a pack leader to my dog and in return, Shaylea is well behaved and a joy to be with. She is also well social­ized from play­ing with her “friends” as dogs can teach each other valu­able lessons using their own language.

David is a per­fec­tion­ist and will not tol­er­ate any less from his team. Any time I need to ask a ques­tion or have a con­cern; it is taken care of imme­di­ately. Luke (man­ager and admin­is­tra­tor) is fab­u­lous. His love for dogs is evi­dent when Shaylea runs to greet him; he is knowl­edge­able, con­fi­dent and has also helped me tremen­dously as well.

I highly rec­om­mend this top-notch facil­ity, with struc­tured play and walks, rein­forced train­ing and a team that dis­plays a gen­uine love for ani­mals. The Orig­i­nal Dog House pro­vide a safe and secure envi­ron­ment and our dogs are mon­i­tored at all times. I have observed many times (when tak­ing a break from work) view­ing the web­cam and see­ing one of the staff mem­bers hug­ging Shaylea; that makes me feel so good! 

I would per­son­ally like to thank David for going “that extra mile for me”.

Best regards, from my whole fam­ily Steve, Gilda, Tiger and Shaylea.

The Politzer Family

I am writ­ing this let­ter to sup­port the work of David Shama and describe my expe­ri­ences of bring­ing my dogs to The Orig­i­nal Dog House. I am the owner of 2 dogs, Teddy and James, both of which have attended The Orig­i­nal Dog House for almost 3 years, since they were young puppies.

Teddy and James are gen­tle, lov­ing and well behaved dogs and I give much of this credit to the won­der­ful train­ing that David pro­vided at The Orig­i­nal Dog House. In fact, both ani­mals are so gen­tle that I have fre­quently been able to bring them to my work place to visit the elderly res­i­dents in 2 long term care facil­i­ties that I have worked in. With­out the won­der­ful train­ing and guide­lines at The Orig­i­nal Dog House these pet vis­its would not be nearly as successful.

At no time, I feel my ani­mals were mis­treated or abused. In fact when my Golden retriever, James would become fright­ened dur­ing groom­ing (because of an expe­ri­ence at another facil­ity) David and the staff would spend extra time and energy to com­fort and dis­tract James and even per­son­ally tele­phone me to let me know how James was man­ag­ing with the bath.

Teddy and James are both healthy and happy and well behaved in social­iz­ing with other dogs!

Under David’s care I feel that my dogs receive won­der­ful care, the cur­rent staff have been very pro­fes­sional and friendly.

Best regards,

Michele Tem­ple

Dear David,

In July 2008 we met you in front of the cof­fee shop in Lea­side, while on an evening walk. Do you remem­ber? Our dog had been neutered and was sport­ing one of the tor­tu­ous hard plas­tic col­lars. I’m cer­tain you had more press­ing mat­ters, but with­out our knowl­edge, you returned to your office and brought back a soft col­lar for us to use. Count that as the first expe­ri­ence we had with your gen­uine kind­ness and love of ani­mals and their families.

Months later, we find our­selves with a fam­ily pet need­ing behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion and try­ing to cope with our con­fu­sion, inad­e­quate feel­ings and con­cern for the qual­ity of the future pet/owner rela­tion­ship. Thank­fully, I had kept a busi­ness card with that soft col­lar plan­ning to return it to you.

Next expe­ri­ence of your kind­ness, pas­sion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism our first appoint­ment for an assess­ment of our needs and a plan for action. With much anx­i­ety, we observed the assess­ment and hoped for an out­come that would restore the rela­tion­ship and behav­iors to “eas­ier” days with our dog. With­out hes­i­ta­tion, he was reg­is­tered with The Orig­i­nal Dog House and given over to you for train­ing and devel­op­ment. If we did not respond and sense the core of your being was of the high­est stan­dard, we most def­i­nitely would not have enter­tained the deci­sion. Since that day, you have guided us through who we need to be for Win­ston and you have taught him how to enjoy being a part of the pack. Not one moment of disappointment.

Your approach has always been with­out screen­ing and wide open for view. There have not been any sur­prises and all meth­ods have been dis­cussed, so that we may too learn what errs of our behav­ior con­tributed to his ill behav­ior or short term regressions.

You approach with a pro­fes­sional, through under­stand­ing of the canine men­tal­ity, appre­ci­at­ing their own per­sonal spir­its, yet teach­ing them (as you would chil­dren) what is socially accept­able, lev­els of expec­ta­tion and the joy of just being a dog.

Each day when I pull up to the build­ing and see the entrance­way canopy, I think back to that great day in July and how heav­ily we have come to rely on The Orig­i­nal Dog House. We sim­ply need to whis­per the word “David” and Win­ston starts look­ing for your antic­i­pa­tion with tail wag­ging. He waits at the front door each morn­ing, same time, in antic­i­pa­tion of the great day ahead. Spend­ing time with you and within the day­care pro­gram has become vital to his well being.

I believe dogs have a strong sense of those deserv­ing of their love. Win­ston includes you in his fam­ily cir­cle. You deserve the respect, earn the respect and deliver train­ing and pet care with sin­cere love and respect.

The happy faces of the “par­ents” on drop-off/picking up and wag­ging pet tails, tells me that I am in the com­pany of the oth­ers who are also thank­ful to have found you. We each have our own story, but the com­mon fac­tor would be David Shama.

Thanks for being who and where you are,

Can­dice Bryan