Growly Dog Classes

Is your dog barking, growling, snapping, or snarling at other dogs or people out on walks? Do they frequently overwhelm other dogs when they try to say hello? Our Growly Dog classes are specially designed for dogs who need some extra help with their social skills, and use methods that will help keep you and your dog (and passers-by!) safe and happy.

In Growly Dog classes or in private training, you will learn tactics to keep you and your dog safe right away, as well as how to teach your dog appropriate alternative behaviors. Our end goal is to help dogs learn to manage their social needs without aggression so that you don’t have to constantly keep them distracted from their triggers.

Ahimsa has been helping people with their Growly Dogs for over 10 years, and we understand that Growly Dogs are not bad dogs, and their owners are not bad owners! Our trainers are highly educated and have experience with dog to dog aggression and dog to human aggression.  We look forward to helping rehabilitate both your dog’s behavior and your relationship with them.

The first step for most Growly Dogs is to attend our Fear and Aggression 101 class, which will help you understand why your dog might be growly, what to do about it, and what you’ll learn in the Growly Dog classes. If your dog has been aggressive with people, it may be most appropriate to start with private training to keep your dog and other students safe. Please contact us if you aren’t sure about where to start!

FAQs for Growly Dogs

Will having my dog around other reactive dogs make their fear or aggression worse?

The short answer to this question is “no!” In our classes we are very careful to keep the dogs “below threshold,” meaning that they aren’t practicing being reactive. Ideally, the dogs never need to know that their classmates are growly, too! We do expect the occasional outburst as part of the learning curve, but our Growly classes tend to be some of the calmest classes we offer.

I would like my whole family to be part of the training process. Is it okay for me to bring my spouse/kids/dog walker/friend?

We want your dog to have the people in their life working together to make this process as consistent and effective as possible, so we encourage you to bring adult family members to class. Because of the nature of working with reactive dogs (many of whom have multiple triggers, with kids being a pretty common one!), humans under the age of 15 are allowed in class on a case-by-case basis. This will depend largely on the dogs in the class (if dogs are fearful of children, we don’t want to put the dog or the kids in an unsafe situation!), so please contact your instructor prior to the class start to discuss whether it’s safe and appropriate.