Wholistic Hound Academy

I adopted what I thought was a German Shepherd, but turned out to be a German Shepherd/Belgian Malinois mix right before Christmas 2024. I knew I was getting a young dog with high exercise and mental stimulation needs, and that certainly turned out to be very true. I knew I would be doing some training, and would need to do more than with my last dog, and both my vet and my neighbors recommended Wholistic Hound. I've been bringing my dog here since January of this year and it has been so helpful, and added so much joy to our lives! Minka was from a rural area, a dumped dog who had never seen as many people (and other dogs!) as there are here in tightly packed Alexandria, VA. I started with the beginner classes, and also the "Calm, Cool, and Connected" class which helped me to get her

I'm a volunteer for Aussie Rescue of the Mid-Atlantic, and we are incredibly fortunate to have Sandy Modell and her team at Wholistic Hound help us with our Aussies! I have worked with Sandy with a foster on reactivity issues and learned so much. What a turnaround with her calm, positive and empathetic approach. Wholistic Hound is critical to our success and to so many!

1000% recommend! The trainers are great, the facility is SPOTLESS and their offerings are varied - sports, puppy classes, obedience - we've done them all! They work overtime to bring out the best in YOU and YOUR DOG, if you're not successful at Wholistic Hound, it's not the trainer or the dog at fault. Some owners expect a quick miracle. Wholistic Hound works in reality. They only engage in positive reinforcement training. All the trainers are dedicated to their craft and are constantly learning and sharing with their clients. Additionally, they are engaged in the community and are very generous to rescues.

Our 4-month old puppy has attended 3 of the puppy social events and the results have been fantastic! She's so much more confident around people and other dogs. The trainers provide valuable advice and a very safe environment for puppies to explore and experience new agility/training toys (tunnels, ball-filled baby pools). Highly recommend!! PS: you don't need to wait until your puppy is fully vaccinated to attend puppy classes.

I enrolled my puppy in their puppy kindergarten. At the advice of our vet, I selected this course since their website said that they required proof of age-appropriate vaccinations and a fecal test. Our puppy wasn’t fully vaccinated yet but if we waited we would miss the training and socialization window. Unfortunately, no one ever asked for vaccination records or followed up to verify (we had our records in our class bag for all the classes just in case it was a momentary oversight). So there really was no assurance that the puppies in this class (or dogs in any previous classes) were vaccinated or healthy. As an anxious puppy mom (we had a neighbor puppy die of parvo recently) this made the course much less enjoyable for us. We chose to stay and complete the course since it was too late f