No facility. No training hall. We work in the places your dog actually has to behave.
Best Buddy Dog Training is Shawn Hines. There is no building to drive to on a Tuesday night, no rented hall with rubber mats and a circle of folding chairs waiting for you and eleven other people. That's on purpose. Obedience that only works in a training hall is not obedience - it's a trick your dog performs in one building.
So we train where the trouble lives. Your kitchen at feeding time. Your front door when the mail comes. The stretch of sidewalk where the beagle two houses down loses his mind every single morning. That's where your dog is failing you, and that's where the work belongs.
Two ways that happens: private in-home sessions at your address, or a four-to-six week board-and-train where your dog lives in my home and comes everywhere with me. No e-collars, no treat bribery, in either one.
Your house, your street, your Saturday errands
Private in-home training starts the moment I walk through your door - and the greeting at that door is the first lesson, not a warm-up before it. How your dog handles a stranger crossing his threshold tells me most of what I need to know in about ninety seconds.
From there we work through the house and back out of it. Four sessions, up to five dogs in the same household, and lifetime phone and video follow-up after we're done. The rooms and routes we use are yours:
- The front door and entryway - the doorbell, the guest, the delivery driver, the dog who thinks the threshold is his to defend.
- The kitchen and dining room - counters, the table, the food bowl, the child holding a sandwich at dog height.
- Stairs, hallways and the couch - who goes first, who gets invited up, who moves when you need to get by.
- The yard and the property line - the fence, the mailbox, the boundary your dog currently patrols on his own terms.
- Your street and sidewalk - loose-leash walking on the actual route you walk, past the actual dogs you pass.
- The car - in, out, and settled, because half of you can't take the dog anywhere without a fight in the driveway first.
- Wherever else it goes wrong - the park, the school pickup line, the trailhead, your mother's house at Thanksgiving.
You're in every session. That's the point. I'm not there to get your dog to listen to me - anybody can do that for an hour. I'm there so he listens to you on a Wednesday in February when I'm eighty miles away.
My house, my pack, and everywhere I go
Board-and-train dogs don't go into a kennel run and come out four weeks later with a diploma. Your dog lives in my home for four to six weeks. He sleeps in the house. He eats with the pack, walks with the pack, and learns the house rules from the dogs already keeping them - which is a faster teacher than I'll ever be.
Then he goes to work with me. Every day is spent in the environments he'll actually have to handle for the rest of his life: busy parks, pet-friendly stores, neighborhood sidewalks, parking lots, public spaces full of people who don't ask before they reach out. A dog who sits in a quiet living room has learned one room. A dog who holds a down-stay on a store aisle while a cart squeaks past has learned the command.
Pickup and delivery, both ends
I'd rather collect your dog myself and bring him back myself. The ten minutes I spend in your driveway and your entryway tell me more about how your dog lives than an hour of questions on the phone - and when I hand him back, I want to see him walk back into the exact environment he has to behave in.
Homecoming includes three optional reintegration sessions at your house, so the dog you get back stays the dog you got back. Lifetime phone and video support after that, at no extra cost.
The proving grounds
These are the places obedience gets tested, and the places we use. Not every dog needs all of them — a reactive shepherd and an eight-month-old lab who mugs guests have different homework - but this is the map:
- Loose leash past fence-runners, joggers, strollers and the dog across the street.
- Traffic noise, sidewalk seating, crosswalk waits, doors opening on both sides.
- Wheels and runners coming up from behind - the classic reactivity trigger.
- Narrow aisles, carts, slick floors, strangers reaching without asking.
- The two waiting rooms where most dogs come apart, and most owners get embarrassed.
- For apartment and city dogs, where the leash never gets a quiet moment.
- Off-leash chaos at a distance, and holding a stay while it happens.
- Car doors, cart returns, the walk from the truck to the entrance without being dragged.
- Rhode Island summer: sand, salt, kids, and forty dogs off leash at once.
- Where every one of these skills has to hold up when nobody is watching.
Where we go
Home base is Warwick, Rhode Island. In-home sessions run out from there across five states, and board-and-train dogs come from all five. If you're near a line - western Connecticut, the South Coast, the Merrimack Valley - call and ask. The map is less rigid than a map looks.
The drive is on me. There is no travel charge anywhere in these five states, no mileage rate and no zone pricing. A family in Litchfield County pays what a family in Warwick pays. Getting to your door is my problem, not a line on your invoice.
All five counties, statewide. Training runs out of Warwick, which puts every corner of the state inside a forty-five minute drive - Woonsocket to Westerly, Newport to Burrillville.
Serving: Warwick • Providence • Narragansett
Fairfield County, Greater Hartford and the river valley, the New Haven shoreline, southeastern Connecticut from New London through Mystic and Stonington, the Quiet Corner, the Litchfield Hills and the Naugatuck Valley.
Serving: Stamford • Bridgeport • Hartford
Greater Boston and the suburbs west of it, the South Coast and the towns along the Rhode Island line, and out into central and western Massachusetts.
Southern and central New Hampshire, where a lot of the work is a dog with too much yard and no recall to go with it.
The New York City metro area and eastern New York. City dogs get the hardest classroom in the five states and, handled right, end up the most reliable dogs I work with.
Don't see your town? It probably isn't a problem. Call or send a message and I'll tell you straight whether I can get to you.
Questions people ask before they book
- No, and that's the whole idea. Board-and-train dogs live in my home rather than a kennel, and in-home clients never leave their own address. Everything you'd want to see happens in a house, on a sidewalk or in a store - which is why the videos page is the best look you'll get at how the work actually goes.
- Yes. If the problem happens at the park, the brewery patio, your office or your in-laws' place, that's where we should be. Tell me where it goes wrong and we'll schedule a session there.
- In the house, with the rest of the pack. Four to six weeks of living in a normal home is a large part of why the training holds when he gets back to yours.
- Board-and-train travels further than in-home work does, for obvious reasons - the dog comes to me once instead of me driving to you four times. If you're outside Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York or Rhode Island, it's worth a phone call.
- No. There's no travel fee, no mileage and no zone pricing anywhere in the five states I cover - the price is the price whether you're ten minutes from Warwick or three hours out. Ask me about it on the consultation call if you want it confirmed before you book.
- In-home is four sessions covering up to five dogs in one household, with lifetime phone and video follow-up. Board-and-train is four to six weeks, plus three optional reintegration sessions at your home and the same lifetime support. Full details are on the in-home and board-and-train pages.
Start With Phone Call
Every dog starts the same way: a free consultation, on the phone, with me - not a scheduler and not a form that emails you back in three days. Tell me what your dog is doing, where he's doing it, and who he's doing it to. I'll tell you which program fits and what it'll take.
(401) 536-7982
Mon–Fri 8am–6pm · Sat 9am–5pm · Sun closed · Warwick, RI
Off-hours calls please leave a voice message.
Prefer to write it out? Send a message here. Read what other owners said on the success stories page.
Who you are to your dog is EVERYTHING
Shawn Hines
Dog Trainer, Best Buddy Dog Training
No charge, no obligation. We talk before anything else happens.