The Great Canadian Dog Academy

Cookie cutter heavy pressure trainer. Went to seminar. His methods were ruining my confident working puppy. ASKING FOR FULL REFUND!! He’s ignoring me now and deleting my Facebook posts... 8 hours of listening to him ramble and there was SEVERAL holes in his methods. According to him ALL police and military dogs are unstable and are being ruined by their handlers because they play tug with them. Overbooked the class of aggressive dogs for size of the room we were in. Thankfully his ego didn’t fear imprint my 7 month old in a room full of aggressive adult dogs. Put her in several situations that were too much for her. From the pack walk to having the only place she could warm up (seminar was in a day for a snowfall warning) was sitting in the MIDDLE of the room with aggressive dogs all around her. Check out my Facebook review for more examples of how bad this course really was.

Took one of his over priced seminars . He did not even know how to put on a chocke chain propperly , he had every one put them on upside down . Spent most of the time bragging about himself . He is just pushing the pack walk . People may see their dogs inprove during the walk but did not give clients the skills to follow threw at home. . The man had very poor understanding of k9 behavours.A waist of money .

The Great Canadian Dog Academy has helped me restore my faith in my once aggressive" dog. You've taught me how to be in control ("Pack leader") of my large canines. I've now learnt the ins and outs of dog psychology

Inherited a dog that was on the verge of being put down. Last attempt was The Great Canadian Dog Academy went so well we recommended to friends and family which I’ve never done before. I went in open minded and came out with a positive perspective on my fur babies.

My partner and I attended Deans 3 day course this past weekend with our one year old large mixed breed dog Hudson. After a big move this summer and a change in routine Hudson was displaying a lot of anxiety, fear, and aggression. Less then 24 hours into the course Hudson was already demonstrating improved behaviors. Now a few days later we continue to see improvements in his behaviors. During the course we learnt so much about our dog that we had no idea about before. We are so excited to continue using this knowledge to give Hudson the best future possible. We highly recommend Dean and The Great Canadian Dog Academy! Our only regret is that we didn't find them sooner.

*EDIT* POST DATED FROM FACEBOOK 7/10/2020Today marks a year when I had to put my boy Dominico down, and part of it was because of Dean’s training. Here’s my story, 2 years ago me and my girlfriend had contacted Dean in regards to fear aggression in our dog. He was under a year old, about 9 months, and we had done our assessment over the phone with Dean. During the phone call we had explained to Dean exactly what our concerns were and would put any amount of money to have the issues resolved. Out of a 10 scale, over the phone, Dean had told us our dog was about a 8 or 9 for aggression and that it can become serious if we did not assess it immediately, so he recommended the $3000 course which sounded amazing to us because we had absolutely zero knowledge on the problems, and unfortunately we had agreed to it without asking the right questions like what kind of methods he uses.. Dean’s $3000 course was insightful despite the fact we didn’t know much, we were there and gave it our everything. When Dean had seen our German Shepherd, he had recommended an e-collar, and I wish we had done more research on this tool.. although we seen amazing results and helped with things like leash pull or recall, it did not however help with his fear. Deans methods are forceful methods such as short leash choker collars and e-collars. When teaching us he demonstrated on using it on our finger on low capacity, and when we put it on our dog, he would cry or yelp in agony, and Dean would told us to ignore because they are just being stubborn.. and we did. That’s when the results had came, few months had gone by, and amazing results walking and recall, but still our dog had fear, when Dean had promised us our dog would trust us, when in reality he was fearing us. We ignored all the signs and thought that eventually it’ll turn out to be okay, and even kept contact with Dean to let him know our progress. I even showed up at one of his seminars with my dog with the e-collar, and told everyone how pleased I was... truth is, Dean may helped many people, and his methods may work on some, but he does not fully understand the nature of the consequences when it’s not used properly. He did not teach us how to properly condition with such a tool, and the long term consequences were severe. Few months later when we had moved from our home, we had contacted Dean letting him know that our dog was changing, and that his behaviour and aggression was starting to be directed to us, we had no idea what it was, and contacted Dean. We had a meet up in place but it did not work out due to timing, but it was too late. On June 29th 2019, my dog had snapped on my girlfriend, and clipped her ear. I had called Dean and asked him what to do, and he had mentioned to me to use the e-collar and to use it on high to make my dog submit to me, show him “pack leader mentality” and I was so scared but I did .. that’s when my dog had turned on me. I suffered from a torn tendon from my thumb, scars and bruises all over my body and stitches all over my arms. When I was released from the hospital I had contacted many different dog trainers and psychologists in regards to the methods I had learnt and all of them said the same thing to me, “no e-collar on a fear based animal especially if they are under a year old, positive reinforcement is key and crucial at that age” . When I had contacted Dean, he kept being up human psychology examples and nothing dog related, and I had asked him a serious question and he had no answer for me, “ DEAN DID MY DOG TRUST ME OR FEAR ME” he had nothing to say. We suffered many injuries and are mentally scarred for life from the incident.. we had to watch our dog be taken away from us and didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to him. He wasn’t even 2 years old. When we kept trying to contact Dean afterwards to let him know he ignored our calls multiple times and messages.*FULL REVIEW CONTINUED ON FACEBOOK.* PLEASE DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE CONSIDERING DEANS EXTREME METHODS AS THEY ARE NOT SHARED THROUGH HIS WEBSITE OR THROUGH HIS CONSULTATION!

My fiancee and I have a German/Australian/Czech Shepherd mix. He is a very high energy dog, who we love very much, but before going to Dean, we had a hard time keeping control of him. Turns out, there was a lot we didn't know when it came to training a puppy.Before we met Dean, we had some family tell us we should consider re-homing our dog. I am super thankful that we took our dog to Dean to get our dog evaluated and trained. The difference we saw after only a few days of training with Dean's methods was like looking at a completely different dog. We recommend the Great Canadian Dog Academy to everyone who need's help balancing their dog's behaviors. You will not regret it!

I wanted to check out Dean's business number to refer a friend to. I am ABSOLUTELY shocked at the multiple negative comments & reviews & felt compelled to write a review. I am basing my experience with TGCDA (Dean) from the coarse I took in about 2017. Not only was I successful by the end of the coarse but so were the other participants (around 8 or 9 couples/families). I heard 2 different couples say that they learned more and accomplished more with Dean in 3 days than ALL other trainers/behaviorists they had used prior to Dean. Is your dog fixed" after the weekend? No! Of coarse not! However

My mother and I participated in a seminar session with Dean in July, and we both were excited to see how he could help us transform our extremely fearful and anxious sheltie, Percy, into a more ”balanced dog.” Dean is very enthusiastic and passionate about dogs, that is clear - and because he is so confident in himself and his methods, it’s difficult to believe your dog will be anything but successful; it’s very easy to get swept up into it.However, here’s the thing: confidence/belief that your dog will change is NOT actual change, it is only confidence. This confidence is the bedrock of Dean’s training approach and its what hinges upon his marketed “ 80-90% improvement in 2 days,” and is also what gave him the confidence to claim he’s “ranked number #1 dog psychologist in Western Canada “ (but it’s never said who ranked him that, though; himself, perhaps?)In short, these are the reasons I definitely do not recommend this company.1. Dean's seminar is essentially a long bragging session about how he's apparently helped people. No real practical application is shown; he just rambles on.2. If you ask him a question about his methodology and its effectiveness, his response will always be I am teaching dog psychology

We gave Dean $1400 for a puppy December 2020 and no puppy. His response was his dog Concho was unable to get pregnant, then going through messy divorce and now waiting for his lawyers. It’s very frustrating why should we have to pay for a lawyer to fight and get our own money back?