The Polite Pups Experience

While walking our corgis in our neighbourhood, we’d heard about a “Donna” from several people on the block and after a few months of searching, ran into somebody that gave us the name of her Enterprise – Polite Pups. We searched and found the most amazing person that we have had the opportunity to come to know. Frodo and Sam at 1.5 years were being walked by her once a week and each and every time she brought them home, we would get a complete run down on what she had been working and how to continue their training during the days she was not working with them

Donna is amazing! She truly loves her job and goes above and beyond when caring for your dog. Gordie loves his play dates at the private dog park in Airdrie. Donna’s service is worth every penny!!

Donna takes Dylan twice a week and engages him in both physical activity and mental, through the “brain-games” she trains with. Anyone that has a dog from a herding breed knows how important it is to keep their keen minds occupied, as well as keeping them physically active. Donna’s train and walk program provides both.

My partner and I were new to being pawrents and our friend recommended Donna to us. I remembered feeling so lost the first few days of bringing Brooklyn home as we did not know what to do. All the reading can never really prepare you for physically caring for another life. Once we met Donna though, we instantly felt relief.

I whole heartedly believe in Donna’s passion, knowledge and application on how to work with and train both dogs and their owners.

Donna is not only an amazing person to be around, she is amazing at what she does and my two pups absolutely loved her.

We have been fortunate to be working with Donna since our pup was 10 weeks and with her help, guidance and encouragement Otis has grown into a confident, levelheaded dog - I suspect her calm demeanour rubbed off on him!

I absolutely loved working with Donna for dog training!

She was knowledgeable and wonderful with our new puppy Zelda. I wanted to create a strong foundation for our puppy to become the best dog she can be. Donna was instrumental in starting this foundation with the positive reinforcement training approach.

I was relieved the moment I spoke to Donna on the phone. I appreciated Donna’s straightforward and honest approach – she told me that she would ‘train’ me to train my pooch, and that’s all I needed to know. I was ready to learn. She also said she would use treats and rewards, no physical punishment like a flick on the nose or wrap on the bum, which aligns 100% with my ethics and world view.

You can not go wrong by engaging Donna Barrett to help you with your dog. Donna clearly explained her objectives and how her lessons matched the stages of puppy development. Donna also showed us how Tessa's reactions to new or different situations could give us clues to her personality. She has helped us to develop good practices when working with a puppy, and has given us lots of tips and techniques to help keep Tessa happy.

Donna was an absolute pleasure to work with! Her knowledge, passion, experience and wisdom were such valuable resources for our family and puppy, Dolly. Positive reinforcement training, coupled with Donna's genuine approach and experience have not only encouraged Dolly to develop into a positive canine citizen, this experience has also developed us into positive canine owners!

Donna definitely understands how to relate to pooches and jumped right in at teaching us how to relate to Jack. We were continually provided explanations on what dog body language to watch for, in fact we received cue cards at every session as a reference to what we had learned. Donna's approach was timely each week with the progression we were seeing with Jack. Donna made herself available at any time for our questions and concerns by sending her off a quick note.

As we only had a dog when I was a teenager, and knowing what breed we would get, we instantly knew we needed to do training, especially since my husband has never had a dog and we have young daughter who needed it too.

Let me just start by saying Donna with Polite Pups is so wonderful, and so professional.

We learned so much from Donna regarding Mochas breeds. Donna went above and beyond her role by including literature for us to read with information on Mochas breeds and bringing a variety of brain games explaining how these items could be used for puzzles and mental stimulation for Mocha.

Due to mine and my husband’s (at times) demanding schedules, it became apparent that we would require someone to stop by and look after our dog. It was hard to think of putting Jet in someone else’s care, but along came Donna.

Donna has been an invaluable resource for me and my family, not only with her training sessions but her overall support with animal husbandry and dog psychology