In February, 2008 we adopted a dog from a rescue group who estimated the dog to be about five years old. The dog had been a stray and was quite ill when she was found and, of course, no one knew anything of her background. She was a sweet dog in the beginning but after about six months she began to develop some issues that we couldn’t train out of her. Out of desperation we looked in the Yellow Pages for a dog trainer and found the listing for Dog-Owner Connection. The listing indicated they were experienced in our dog’s problems, so we called and talked to Karen Arnoff.
We told Karen of our problems and she said she thought she could help and gave us her rates. Knowing this could become expensive we did some checking with members of the rescue group from which we got our dog and although no one actually knew Karen, a number of them said they heard of her and all comments were positive. One member, a lady I have enormous respect for, a lady who is a lifelong dog breeder, handler and trainer, said Karen is arguably the best dog behaviorist in the state of Ohio. Based on that information we invited Karen to our house to see what she could do to help us.
Karen arrived, spent five minutes on introductions and another five minutes on playing with and observing the dog. At that point she said the dog doesn’t have behavior problems – she had medical problems and suspected it was her thyroid. Karen spent some time showing us some things we could do to mitigate some of the problems we had been having but advised the medical problems had to be addressed first.
When we took our dog to our vet (after Karen called her with her findings and suspicions), our vet said she didn’t have a thyroid problem because she wasn’t overweight and sent us home. Karen insisted we get a thyroid test and sent us to another vet. The next day we took our dog to a different vet who ran a thyroid test and gave the dog an exam. The vet said this dog wasn’t five years old – but in his estimation she was between 11 and 14 years old, and probably closer to the 14. He also suspected she was deaf (which would explain why we were having trouble with voice commands) and she also showed definite signs of cognitive impairment, both conditions Karen Arnoff suspected on her visit. The thyroid results came back way out of the normal range. We put the dog on medicine for the thyroid and implemented the practices Karen suggested and enjoyed our dog for the rest of her life – unfortunately that were only a few more months.
We were amazed at the accurate evaluation Karen came up with in such a short time, something our former vet was unable to do. We were further amazed at how the dog behaved once we started to do the things Karen suggested, but sadly, it was too late.
Upon losing our beloved pet we immediately sought another one. This one we fostered for a month or two before we made the final decision to adopt her. We were so impressed with Karen that we hired her for another session just to evaluate our foster. We felt it was worth the expense to get her opinion before committing to another pet for, hopefully, ten to twelve years. Karen gave our baby the ‘thumbs up’ and she couldn’t have been more correct. She is the sweetest, most well-behaved dog we have ever had. Karen called it right.