My husband, Dave, and I had just recently put down our first Airedale (1st Airedale together- we each had Airedales growing up), 'Herbie," whom we had for 13 ½ yrs. We were devastated. We thought we should get another Airedale and looked at SWAT's website and filled out the online application.

Frankie was 11 months old, had been through two homes, two foster homes and had had three different names. He is all Airedale--hyper, very silly, but eager to please. He weighs in at 75# and is quite muscular--a formidable force to be reckoned with for sure--but still all goofball. He is a very high energy dog that would jump on us, mouth us, yelp (loudly) and jump on us for about 5-10 minutes straight when we came home from work every day (separation anxiety), counter surf, dig holes in the yard, bark and lunge at people and dogs, pull on the leash--walk ahead of us. Frankie had some minimal training but not very far along with it. We wanted to have a socialized dog so we can have people over to the house and not worry about him scaring them with his loud barking and jumping behaviors. We also want to take him places and have him behave appropriately.

We decided that training was the answer, and that we really needed professional help in training Frankie.

After only 3 ½ months of training, Frankie now knows all the basic commands: Come, Wait (no forward movement), Off (redirect dog from jumping, chasing, getting on top of something or someone), Drop It (drop what is in mouth), Heel (shoulder is even with your leg on a walk), Place (all 4 feet on a specific area), Sit, Down, and Break. Most importantly, he is beginning to understand that my husband and I are the bosses!

Frankie no longer digs holes in the backyard. He doesn’t jump on us or mouth us. There is minimal hyper behavior when we come home (still working on it). He is getting better about lunging/barking at other dogs (still working on it). We can have people over, and he won’t bark or jump on them. He doesn’t pull on the leash. He obeys really well. He isn’t a robot. He is still a goofball Airedale. Just that now he recognizes his place in the pack. Life is so much easier, and it is really fun and rewarding for all of us. It has truly opened my eyes to begin to understand the whole dog psychology world.

Training does require a time commitment. It’s also imperative to be consistent when working with your dog, and I can tell you that the results so far are amazing- (even crazy Airedales can be trained!). It is a work in process, and it is so worth it.

I am writing this because not only do I believe it makes a huge difference in our relationship with our dog, and I think every dog owner should be so lucky. But also when I look back when we had our 1st Airedale, Herbie, I realize that we were very inconsistent- which resulted in several behavior issues. We were well-intentioned, but we humanized him- he was our “baby”. It really makes me sad. As they say, ‘if I knew then what I know now’… I didn’t want to make the same mistakes with Frankie. If his original owners took the time to have him (and themselves) trained properly maybe things would have worked out differently. I bet that’s probably true with a lot of Rescue Airedales and other dogs in general. It’s not the dog that has the problem(s), it’s the people.

We live in Phoenix, Arizona. The trainer we chose and can heartily recommend is Kim Baer, 602 391-5336