At the end of every year I run some reports from my systems that we use to find out exactly how many lessons and whatnot I did for the previous year. 2013 was sort of a banner year.

In total last year I did 867 lessons. That comes out to about 2.5 lessons every single day of the year and that is just the lessons that I did, it doesn’t include board and train or any of the sessions that Lisa did for the company. That is a lot of dog training! When you look at something like that, and the experience that comes from working with that many clients and that many dogs every year, it makes you realize what you’re paying for. Most of the other dog trainers out there do this business as a hobby, that’s not the case here at Fidelio. This is what we do all day every day, and it’s what we’ve done all day every day for the past 14 years.

The past year has also brought pretty dramatic changes in Austin. I heard recently that Austin is the fastest-growing city in America at this point, and I can certainly tell that from the amount of traffic that were seeing. In the last 14 years I can honestly say that I have never been late to an appointment because of traffic until 2013. Things of changed traffic has gotten far more complicated to deal with, and it’s got much more difficult for us to predict how long it will take to get from one client to another. This is painful for me, because as most of you know I have always been on time to appointments in the past. Unfortunately I’ve had to resort to the tactic that most service people deal with, in that I will always call you if traffic is a problem and I am forced to be late. I apologize to any of those clients in the future that may have this happen to them, but it looks like traffic like this is going to be a fact of life in Austin from now on.

The good news is, that we still come to you. You do not have to pile your dog in the car and fight afternoon traffic to get to some group class with a bunch of other yapping and ill behaved dogs. We come to you and we work in the area of your neighborhood that’s important for your dog to behave. Part of what you pay for is that convenience. We fight the traffic for you while you get dinner ready for the kids, get rested up, and prepare for your training lesson with your dog.

So, in closing, I like to thank all of my clients for everything they did last year. Thank you for each and every one of those 867 lessons that I worked with you on, and thank you for the time and attention you gave me during them. We appreciate you more than you know.

Steve Haynes

Austin dog trainer

Fidelio Dog Works

Image by: Bill Sallans

Fidelio Dog Works has always been a word of mouth business. I’ve kept it like that for a host of reasons over the last 13 years. In fact, a lot of my clientele really doesn’t like ‘publicity’ at all and they’ve always appreciated that we are discrete with stories about corporate jets, estates, horse ranches, hunting lodges, and the other goodies that goes along with that clientele.  But recently we’ve been getting a bit more exposure and it’s nice to be appreciated in a more public way than we have sought for the last 13 years.

Tribeza, the super glossy Austin magazine just did a piece on us and it was so nice to see that the journalist really ‘got’ what we do here at Fidelio. I particularly liked how she described what we do and the way we train as artisanal and very specific to the clients.  That’s true: we are, and we always will be.  She also notes that we stay small for a reason, which is also true. The article gives the feel of Fidelio — we like what we do and we do it very very well.

So while not every one of our clients has President Obama, or former President Bush, over for dinner on a regular basis, we’ve been there, done that. And if we can deal with the intricacies of handling their dog during presidential visits, we’re more than likely able to help you with your pup too.

We’re grateful for the recognition.

Steve Haynes

Austin Dog Trainer

Fidelio Dog Works