Read this before you reach out.

Dogs over 12 weeks old whose owners have run out of road. Reactive on lead, anxious, can't settle at home or in a cafe, or "knows the commands but doesn't listen". Most of my clients have already been to one, two, sometimes three trainers. If that's you, you're in the right place.

If your puppy is under 12 weeks, start with the Good Puppy Blueprint ($440, online) rather than a private session. It's built to start before puppy comes home.

Ninety minutes. The first 30 is theory: I walk you through the PACE framework, explain how I read your dog, and give you notes to take home. Then we go hands-on with whatever your dog needs that day: lead handling, a CALM setup, PLAY structure, or breaking a reactive cycle on a walk.

You leave with a plan for the week and an honest answer on whether a program is right for you. Sometimes it isn't, and I'll say so.

Yes, with full disclosure of any bite history before the first session. There's a question for it on the intake form. The work is slower and the structure tighter, but aggression cases finish the same four-week PACE Program as everyone else when the owner is committed.

Newport or Docklands, Wednesday to Saturday. Home visits are available across greater Melbourne with a call-out fee on top of the session (see fees), generally weekdays 10am to 2pm, or weekends if you're inside my service area.

Yes, worldwide. Behavioural assessment, setting up the method, and reviewing your videos all work well over a screen. Lead handling for a reactive dog is easier in person, so regional clients usually do the first session face to face when they're in Melbourne and the rest as a mix of online and in person. If you're elsewhere and want someone in the room, The Hachi Way lists trainers who deliver this method.

By the end you shouldn't need me, so read the number as a one-off. The full PACE Program is $2,000 over five weeks: a $400 consultation (90 minutes, in Melbourne or online), then four weekly sessions at $1,600, paid as a package. The consultation is the first $400 of the program. If you stop after it, that's all you pay. All prices include GST.

What the $1,600 buys is four sessions, a written plan, and roughly 20 days of me reviewing your videos on WhatsApp between them. Ninety-eight percent of my clients, whether it's general pet behaviour, a dog that can't switch off, fear-based cases, or aggression, find the four weeks is enough, as long as they're committed. You're not paying me to train your dog each week. You're paying to learn to read and run your own dog, so the change holds for the rest of its life.

Because a single session without momentum gives you a good afternoon and the same dog on Monday. Reactivity, anxiety, and the rest are built on months or years of repetition. Unwinding that takes consistent reps over consecutive weeks, with me watching the videos in between. So the work after the consultation is a program by design. I don't sell one-off follow-ups.

It's the last dog training bill most of my clients pay. That's the honest frame: the PACE Program is paid once. Everything else you spend on a dog you can't manage is paid for the life of the dog.

• A veterinary behaviourist. Roughly $600 to $900 for the first consult and $200 to $300 a review. If medication follows, add $40 to $80 a month for as long as the dog is on it. Some dogs need that as well as training, and if yours does I'll say so. It doesn't teach anyone to handle the dog.
• Boarding a reactive dog, if anyone will take it, is $80 to $150 a night. One ten-night trip is $1,000 to $1,500. Every trip.
• A dog walker because walks are unbearable: about $35 a walk, three a week, close to $5,000 a year.
• Daycare that won't have your dog back. The deposit, then the search starts again.
• The one nobody prices. A client wrote in her review that she lost four years of experiences and memories with her dog before finding something that worked.

The other side of the ledger is quieter. A dog you can manage is a dog your sister will actually say yes to having for the weekend. It goes to the cafe instead of staying home. Walks stop being something you brace for. None of that has a dollar figure, and it's most of the reason people book.

Two lines from my Google reviews, both from people who sat with the number for a while first: "I was hesitant at first because of her high prices but in hindsight, she was worth every cent." And: "I would have paid three times the amount for the knowledge and outcome we got." I'm not saying it's cheap. It isn't. It's paid once.

Two honest options, and neither of them is a discount.

• A Hachi Way associate. The program can be delivered by one of my associates, trainers I have trained myself, working to the same method with the same expectations. Associate programs are $1,000 to $1,400 for the four weeks depending on the trainer's experience. The initial consultation is still with me. I design the program, I supervise it, and I'm across the videos. The associate runs the sessions.
• Self-paced courses. Teach Your Dog to Switch Off ($49) and The Reactive Dog Reset ($129) cover the two problems I'm asked about most. Selective Hearing ($10) is the conversation I have in the first ten minutes of every session, written down. Read it before you book. If the reframe lands, the first session goes further. If it doesn't, you've saved yourself $390.

Yes, on programs. Two or three equal instalments, with a $20 admin fee for each extra instalment. On the $1,600 PACE Program that's two instalments of $810, or three of $545. The first instalment books session one, then one instalment falls due before each following session. Pay in full and there's no admin fee.

Four sessions, your written plan, and video feedback on WhatsApp between sessions, which in practice is me reviewing your footage most days for a month. That video loop is where most of the change happens, so use it. Equipment isn't included. I'll tell you exactly what to buy, usually a long lead and not much else, and nothing you don't need. See Recommended Gear.

Yes. Peak times, which are weekends and weekdays after 3pm, carry a 10% surcharge. Off peak is Wednesday to Friday, 7am to 3pm.

Yes. Two dogs from the same household is $50 per session on top of the standard rate, and WhatsApp support covers both. Even when only one dog is visibly the problem, the other dog's energy usually drives it. The dynamics between your dogs are part of the work.

A call-out fee on top of the session price, set by suburb. Newport and Docklands have none. Most of the inner west and north sits between $45 and $80. Put your full address on the intake form and I'll confirm the exact figure when I send through times.

I invoice by email and you pay by bank transfer. Sessions are paid before the session. Programs are paid in full at the start unless we've agreed a payment plan. The invoice is your tax invoice and includes GST.

Fill in the intake form. That's the only door in. It asks about you, your dog, what's happening, and what you've already tried, and it asks whether you've read this page. I read every form myself and reply within three business days with times. I don't book from Instagram DMs, so if you've messaged me there, the form is still your next step.

I take a limited number of new clients each week and sessions run Wednesday to Saturday only, so there's often a short wait. The form is the fastest way to find out where the next gap is.

Forty-eight hours notice to move or cancel a session. Inside 48 hours, the full session fee applies. With more than two days notice, we reschedule to a time within two weeks of the original date. Once the first session of a program has been delivered, the program fee is non-refundable; the remaining sessions can still be moved with reasonable notice. If I have to cancel, you get a full refund or a new time, your choice. The full policy is in the terms.

Usually within the first one or two sessions. The lasting change is the four weeks of the PACE Program, because that's where your own timing and reading catch up with what I showed you in session one.

Homework, filmed, sent to me on WhatsApp. I send back specific feedback: your hand, your footwork, the dog's response in your own street. The 98% figure above is for owners who do this. If life means you can't run the homework for the next month, wait and book when you can. Don't pay for a program you won't run.

Then book the consultation. Plenty of people get what they need from those 90 minutes and the notes, and $400 is all you pay. What I won't do is sell you a one-off follow-up later. If you want more after the consult, it's the PACE Program, and the $400 you've already paid is the first part of it.

Yes. $200 and $400 vouchers, valid for three years, redeemable against an initial consultation or the puppy program. Details on the gift page.

No. Obeying is not a relationship. I teach expectations, not commands, using one framework, PACE: PLAY, ANCHOR, CALM, EXPLORE. Each mode has clear rules and none of them blur. Get the modes holding and most of what you came in to fix resolves on its own. If you want a dog that sits on cue and still lunges at the next Labrador, I'm the wrong trainer.

Strategically, mostly in PLAY. I don't use food to distract a dog or lure a reactive dog past a trigger. That papers over the problem. Your dog just thinks, "I'm going to look at you to see if I can get the chicken," and nothing underneath has changed.

Murphy is my black Labrador, a certified assistance dog, and the most regulated dog I have ever worked with. I bring her to most reactive-dog sessions. Reactive dogs read her calm and start to mirror it. She's not a prop. She's a working partner who shows your dog what neutral actually looks like.

No, and be wary of anyone who does. Dog behaviour depends on genetics, history, environment, and mostly on how consistent the handler is. What I can tell you is what 240+ Google reviews and four years of programs say: committed owners get a different dog in four weeks. The variable is you, and I say that kindly.

Almost certainly not: across more than 1,300 reactive-dog cases, 99 out of 100 turn out to be arousal problems, not obedience problems. The dog is not ignoring a command, it is over its capacity to cope, which is why the fix is lowering the baseline rather than more training commands.

Most of my clients notice the first change within days of starting, and by the halfway point of the 4-week program reactivity has usually dropped enough that the focus shifts to the owner's reading skills. That is faster than the months of "management" many owners are told to expect, because the work targets the arousal underneath the behaviour rather than the lunging itself.

Around 350 a year for the past four years, more than 1,300 reactive dogs across Melbourne and online.