Whether you just brought home a new puppy, want to fine tune your dog's training or have dog behavior problems that you want to change, we can help you accomplish your goals. Our highly effective, modern, science-based techniques are fun, dog-friendly and taught with an emphasis on trust and cooperation so you can truly be your dog's best friend. Our 6-week course will give you and your puppy a solid foundation during the most impressionable time in your dog's life.
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Urban Dawgs is committed to providing the resources and support necessary to build lifelong relationships between people and their canine companions. Offering a broad range of educational programs and services, our goal is to help dog guardians better understand how their dogs learn and communicate, and how to effectively bridge that communication using proven positive reinforcement training methods. Training dogs is not a second job or a hobby for us. It is our full-time profession, our life and our love.
With private sessions you can learn at your own pace in a comfortable environment and have the convenience of flexibly fitting training into your busy schedule. Sessions are tailored to you and your individual dog. Our Certified Dog Training and Behavior Consultants are among the foremost dog behavior specialists in the country.
Puppy Training - this is the most important class your dog will ever attend. Our fun-filled 6-week puppy class features ample off-leash socialization and provides a strong foundation in basic training. We've been teaching Puppy Kindergarten classes for over a decade and have worked with thousands of puppies.
The Urban Dawgs training facility is conveniently located at 46 English Plaza in Red Bank, NJ. The modern, climate-controlled space features an open floor plan, wall-to-wall matting, full spectrum lighting and is wheelchair accessible. Every aspect of our space has been designed to provide a comfortable, positive learning environment for both humans and canines alike.
Reviews (9)
Meghan Schienvar
Mar 26, 2022
We LOVED Urban Dawgs. My pembroke welsh corgi had such a great time in puppy kindergarten. It was a great way to teach him the basics like sit, down, touch, leave it, etc. He also received great socialization skills and loves playing with all dogs now! It was great to see how the other dogs in class improved as well, the shyest pupper who hid under the seat was playing and outgoing by the end of the 6 weeks. Well worth it, couldn't recommend it more, especially if you want your puppy to be social with others.
Kim Summey
Jul 08, 2021
Buyers BEWARE! Please read this before proceeding to this place! I was going to take my puppy there and thank GOD I didn't! When I first was interested in his services his text message approach is NOT the way to go. When you have a question, it is always visit my website as a response. I went elsewhere. The owner likes to use public parking to train dogs that can be aggressive!
I was walking to my appointment and he abruptly told me to turn around and walk the other way. I did but as I Walked I stated he didn't own this property and the public is free to walk in a public parking lot. He proceeded to get nasty and ignore his customers. You can tell a lot by someone's personality when you are not paying them! Trust me, read all the reviews about this place.
He has a terrible attitude and he should NOT have the privilege to train a family member at a high cost with poor customer service and poor character. Just walk by one day and see how he speaks down to his clients. Just sad, people think they can speak to any kind of way because he chose a bad location to properly train animals. He keeps his windows dark for a reason. Someone needs to train HIM!
I was walking to my appointment and he abruptly told me to turn around and walk the other way. I did but as I Walked I stated he didn't own this property and the public is free to walk in a public parking lot. He proceeded to get nasty and ignore his customers. You can tell a lot by someone's personality when you are not paying them! Trust me, read all the reviews about this place.
He has a terrible attitude and he should NOT have the privilege to train a family member at a high cost with poor customer service and poor character. Just walk by one day and see how he speaks down to his clients. Just sad, people think they can speak to any kind of way because he chose a bad location to properly train animals. He keeps his windows dark for a reason. Someone needs to train HIM!
Stephen Sweeney
Feb 28, 2021
This is a fantastic place to take your puppy for training. It's small classes with owners, focused on positive reward using treats - and it is fabulous and works. We used Drayton's training at our home during and after class completed and we have the best trained and well behaved dog we've ever owner in 30 years of dog ownership. Seeing the noted person mentioning abuse and "leaving" your dog there sounds completely wrong especially since you don't leave them there. Never an issue with this positive training.
Chelsea Palermo
May 15, 2020
We took our 8 month old puppy here and met with Drayton for the initial session at the end of October. Within 30 minutes of being there we already caught his condescending tone. We stayed to give it a chance for what we thought was the benefit of our dog and unfortunately we were let down. (The entire session from the moment we got out of the car to the end, was recorded on his multi camera setup and go pro which I'm sure since has been deleted).
To start, his resolution to everything we presented to him was to just keep feeding the dog treats and bribe him for his proper behavior, which I simply could have done at home myself. While the entire time of our consultation our dog chewed on bully sticks that had previously been there, and shared amongst I'm sure many dogs and polished off nearly a whole bag of treats.
Right off the bat, he bashed our veterinarian who happens to be a family friend, in him helping us select Science Diet for our dog. Drayton continued to tell us that Vets are not educated anymore than 2 weeks in their schooling on nutrition and that they simply become vets because they are capable of performing surgery, "they don't know nutrition".
Extremely unprofessional to belittle and discredit the dedication that our vet has put into our dog, and actually.all vets! He then wanted to observe my boyfriend put the harness on our dog to go outside for a walk, to demonstrate the pulling issue. By the way, his resolution to our dog pulling was for us to "hustle and keep up with our dog following scent".Anyways, our harness wasn't good enough to Drayton he "did not feel safe using our harness" and preferred to use his own.as he boasts SAFETY for the dog; "safe, unsafe, and neutral" is his mantra.
My dog ducked, making it difficult for the harness to be put on him, and immediately Drayton ripped the harness out of our hands, and walked away in pure frustration and anger that we couldn't get the harness on him the first try, followed by some arrogant comments. We should've left then, and to our poor judgment we stayed. I have an 85 lb. dog, very powerful and fast, for someone as educated as he claims to be, he chose to use a leash that is inch width without ever having walked my dog and experiencing his strength.
That being said, he encouraged my dog to chase after a squirrel, in my understanding to show us that he would be able to disengage the dog from this action. Instead what happened was, a pole became the divide between our dog and him, and the width leash snapped, leaving my dog to continue his sprint into traffic on a main road in red bank. Meanwhile Drayton, myself and my boyfriend were running after and screaming for him to come back, as people were getting out of their cars to stop traffic so our dog wouldn't get hit. Stunned is not the word.
Our harness was what he was so worried about, yet his leash and poor judgment almost had our dog seriously injured or worse, killed right in front of us. He expressed utter disbelief for his equipment failure and apologized to no end and seemed to be extremely concerned. But shortly after, made sure to remind us that "if we had better recall skills, we could've gotten him to come back quicker".
We put our faith in this person, his company and his practices, and what we left with was a dog even worse off than when we brought him there. He has been sick since the moment we left the facility, does not seem like he feels "safe" with us and is now noticeably traumatized, irritable and anxious. As are we. We spoke with Drayton following and he has without question agreed to send us a full refund in the mail, adding "I hope I can count on your discretion".our full refund was the only good thing we took away from this experience.
To start, his resolution to everything we presented to him was to just keep feeding the dog treats and bribe him for his proper behavior, which I simply could have done at home myself. While the entire time of our consultation our dog chewed on bully sticks that had previously been there, and shared amongst I'm sure many dogs and polished off nearly a whole bag of treats.
Right off the bat, he bashed our veterinarian who happens to be a family friend, in him helping us select Science Diet for our dog. Drayton continued to tell us that Vets are not educated anymore than 2 weeks in their schooling on nutrition and that they simply become vets because they are capable of performing surgery, "they don't know nutrition".
Extremely unprofessional to belittle and discredit the dedication that our vet has put into our dog, and actually.all vets! He then wanted to observe my boyfriend put the harness on our dog to go outside for a walk, to demonstrate the pulling issue. By the way, his resolution to our dog pulling was for us to "hustle and keep up with our dog following scent".Anyways, our harness wasn't good enough to Drayton he "did not feel safe using our harness" and preferred to use his own.as he boasts SAFETY for the dog; "safe, unsafe, and neutral" is his mantra.
My dog ducked, making it difficult for the harness to be put on him, and immediately Drayton ripped the harness out of our hands, and walked away in pure frustration and anger that we couldn't get the harness on him the first try, followed by some arrogant comments. We should've left then, and to our poor judgment we stayed. I have an 85 lb. dog, very powerful and fast, for someone as educated as he claims to be, he chose to use a leash that is inch width without ever having walked my dog and experiencing his strength.
That being said, he encouraged my dog to chase after a squirrel, in my understanding to show us that he would be able to disengage the dog from this action. Instead what happened was, a pole became the divide between our dog and him, and the width leash snapped, leaving my dog to continue his sprint into traffic on a main road in red bank. Meanwhile Drayton, myself and my boyfriend were running after and screaming for him to come back, as people were getting out of their cars to stop traffic so our dog wouldn't get hit. Stunned is not the word.
Our harness was what he was so worried about, yet his leash and poor judgment almost had our dog seriously injured or worse, killed right in front of us. He expressed utter disbelief for his equipment failure and apologized to no end and seemed to be extremely concerned. But shortly after, made sure to remind us that "if we had better recall skills, we could've gotten him to come back quicker".
We put our faith in this person, his company and his practices, and what we left with was a dog even worse off than when we brought him there. He has been sick since the moment we left the facility, does not seem like he feels "safe" with us and is now noticeably traumatized, irritable and anxious. As are we. We spoke with Drayton following and he has without question agreed to send us a full refund in the mail, adding "I hope I can count on your discretion".our full refund was the only good thing we took away from this experience.
Krystal Schweizer
Feb 25, 2020
If could give this company a 0 rating, I would! My husband and I chose this company because they claim that they specialize in pit-bulls. My husband and I have a blue nose bull boxer. The trainer said that they were over-booked and that I would have to schedule 6 weeks in advance and pay the full amount ($350) a month in advance in order to keep my appointment.
He proceed to call me 8 times during working hours to make sure that he received the payment far enough in advance. When I asked him if it was just a deposit, he said no because he finds that most people cancel if they don't pay the full amount. - I should have known then to cancel the appointment with this trainer! We explained through the 17 page, 250 question packet that was also required prior to our appointment that our dog is a loving, 65-pound lap dog.
We also explained that our dog was a rescue and is fearful and started to show some aggressive behavior such as growing and lunging which was why my husband and I were looking for a trainer. Of course, on the first session with Drayton, our dog who was protecting us, lunged and growled at him (like we explained in our 250 questions). Just like in people, not all dogs are motivated by the same thing.
He thought that throwing treats at her would make her "like" him. As a professional, he should have known that that does not work for her and she is motivated by playing and with toys. During our session the ONLY thing Drayton did was throw treats AT my dog. He continued to explain that in his experience with other dogs and how there was this one instance that he had a dog that went to bite him because he got too close to their owner and was INSIDE their car! ( he forced the elderly couple to euthanize the dog that day or he was calling animal control!).
About 20 minutes in he explained that the only option we had was to euthanize our dog - what a horrible thing to hear especially when the person that is sharing this information with you has absolutely no empathy about it! He continued to explain that we needed to buy her a steak and bring her to be euthanized that night. After crying all night over the experience that we just had had after Drayton explained that our beautiful, loving and most sweetest dog was to be put down, we felt that we needed to think of an alternative route for her and bring her to the SPCA so that they could re-train her for another loving family as we felt that her protectiveness would not be able to be trained by us.
When I called the SPCA, I found out that Drayton had called every rescue in NJ as well as our Vet to inform them that our dog was not "adoptable" and that she would be euthanized anyways! The trainer explained that he was the only one who could train this dog. I think he needs to get off his high horse and look at his own fears! We had asked him for a partial refund because he did nothing for our dog other than feed her treats and tell us that we had to euthanize her.
He told us that a refund was not possible, but that we had a "credit" if we decided to get another dog. If you want to give your dog a fighting chance do not use Urban Dawgs in Red Bank, New Jersey!
He proceed to call me 8 times during working hours to make sure that he received the payment far enough in advance. When I asked him if it was just a deposit, he said no because he finds that most people cancel if they don't pay the full amount. - I should have known then to cancel the appointment with this trainer! We explained through the 17 page, 250 question packet that was also required prior to our appointment that our dog is a loving, 65-pound lap dog.
We also explained that our dog was a rescue and is fearful and started to show some aggressive behavior such as growing and lunging which was why my husband and I were looking for a trainer. Of course, on the first session with Drayton, our dog who was protecting us, lunged and growled at him (like we explained in our 250 questions). Just like in people, not all dogs are motivated by the same thing.
He thought that throwing treats at her would make her "like" him. As a professional, he should have known that that does not work for her and she is motivated by playing and with toys. During our session the ONLY thing Drayton did was throw treats AT my dog. He continued to explain that in his experience with other dogs and how there was this one instance that he had a dog that went to bite him because he got too close to their owner and was INSIDE their car! ( he forced the elderly couple to euthanize the dog that day or he was calling animal control!).
About 20 minutes in he explained that the only option we had was to euthanize our dog - what a horrible thing to hear especially when the person that is sharing this information with you has absolutely no empathy about it! He continued to explain that we needed to buy her a steak and bring her to be euthanized that night. After crying all night over the experience that we just had had after Drayton explained that our beautiful, loving and most sweetest dog was to be put down, we felt that we needed to think of an alternative route for her and bring her to the SPCA so that they could re-train her for another loving family as we felt that her protectiveness would not be able to be trained by us.
When I called the SPCA, I found out that Drayton had called every rescue in NJ as well as our Vet to inform them that our dog was not "adoptable" and that she would be euthanized anyways! The trainer explained that he was the only one who could train this dog. I think he needs to get off his high horse and look at his own fears! We had asked him for a partial refund because he did nothing for our dog other than feed her treats and tell us that we had to euthanize her.
He told us that a refund was not possible, but that we had a "credit" if we decided to get another dog. If you want to give your dog a fighting chance do not use Urban Dawgs in Red Bank, New Jersey!
Chelsey Dokus
Dec 18, 2019
Love Drayton and his team. Can't say enough great things about his training and teaching style. He is spot on with feedback, gives direct and helpful insight and has a clear focus during class. This is the place to go and person to work with. We took our four year old pit bull for training and now our new pit bull puppy. I can't wait to come back for intermediate classes. You'll will leave with skills to help your pup throughout the future that are necessary and critical for a healthy, happy and safe dog.
Cathleen Givney
Jun 18, 2018
Drayton helped us tremendously to learn how to successfully interact with and help our dog Bugsy learn! We have been happier, less stressed, and seeing consistent progress every day! Highly recommend Urban Dawgs. Drayton left us feeling reassured that our dog had nothing "wrong" and just needed the right way to learn and grow.
Mike Forgie
Mar 17, 2017
Drayton was great with Honey. My girlfriend and I went here to correct some behaviors around resource guarding and the littlest but aggression. After a few days following Drayton's instructions, we saw a positive change in our pup. Think of this as human training for dogs, and make the investment to give your four legged friend a better life!
B. Giv
Nov 11, 2016
Drayton Michaels and his company Urban Dawgs is by far, the very best choice we have made in training our rescue dog. Prior to meeting Drayton, we had gone through 2 professional trainers and made zero progress with our dogs behavior, actually became more negative and personally frustrating. After our first session with drayton, we can rest easy. Immediate progress, results, and kbowledge o hot to progress with our training. We truely feel we have now made the best decision regarding our dogs behavior.
