We had a _terrible_ experience with Kristina, and I would advise anyone considering working with…read moreher to read this review in full first. She made several decisions that made us deeply uncomfortable, both in terms of how she related to our dog, other dogs and how she treated her financial agreements with us (i.e. not honoring her word and charging us for services not received).
Shortly after moving to Oakland, we had to go away on short notice and had to establish a new boarding relationship. We contacted Kristina about a week before leaving. We agreed to one day of doggie daycare that we did not otherwise need to determine if this was a good fit. This was explicitly a "test". She required us to put down a deposit to hold the boarding spot.
When I dropped my dog off, she began making derogatory comments about a very elderly dog she was boarding in a confiding way, as though it would be obvious to me that the dog was a problem (it wasn't). She said the dog was very old and needed to be put down, that the owners hadn't been up front with her about the dog's problems. I was amazed she would tell a new client that another client's dog should be put down. Mystified, I asked what the dog's problems were. She said that the dog was sometimes disoriented and bumped into walls, that it sometimes vocalized and cried for its owners (as it was doing then ) and it made her feel terrible to hear this. She said she would not work with this dog again. To me, nothing about the dog's behavior seemed problematic or out of the ordinary for an elderly dog while boarding and it was only stressful to me to hear a prospective dog boarding business owner talking about dogs this way. She also said she was possibly going camping for 2 of the 4 days we would be boarding our dog, but her roommate would be around to watch the dogs. This was also alarming, but we felt we had no time to find another arrangement, so we agreed.
When we picked up our dog at the end of the day, we learned that our dog had been cowering under the furniture most of the day. We'd never seen our dog behave this way, though he has boarded with half a dozen other people. He usually sits in guests' laps the whole time they are visiting. We were alarmed, but Kristina asked us to bring our dog back a second day because she'd been out of the house much of the day and hadn't been available to make our dog comfortable. She could not remember our dog's name and referred to him as a "she" (he is male). We were reluctant not only because of the red flags already described, but because we did not need daycare, only boarding, and each additional "test" day of daycare was costly. It was concerning that we'd paid for a test day when Kristina was mostly out of the house. We felt she could have planned better.
We were supposed to bring our dog at 7AM the second day. We ran late. Kristina called us at 7:01 or 7:02 AM and asked where we were and told us she needed us to arrive at the time scheduled. It was stressful for us that there was so little wiggle room. Kristina indicated that she was going to a doctor's appointment that morning and needed to leave promptly at 7AM. Yet the only point of this second unneeded day of daycare was to see if our dog would be more comfortable with her if she was home, instead of out of the house. Our dog was returning again to a frightening environment with nobody there to calm him.
After drop off, my partner and I realized we were uncomfortable leaving our dog with Kristina. I contacted her and said I preferred not to go forward with the boarding arrangement based on the test daycare experience and would she be willing to refund for boarding. She texted, "of course." That afternoon, 8 hours later, with no further communication to the contrary, my partner picked up our dog. Kristina refused the refund because she said we hadn't given sufficient notice, even though our whole relationship had happened within such short notice that we could not possibly have given more notice, and even though she'd agreed to a refund based on the test days. She said her policy was to keep all the money, but that she would make an exception and give us a credit for daycare. We didn't trust her anymore, and so my partner argued for an hour before she agreed to refund 50%. She agreed only after my partner asked for a written policy, which stated she would keep 50%, not 100%, as she had been verbally claiming. Seeing the discrepancy, she said she's not much of a businessperson and can't keep track of her own policy.
In the end, we paid Kristina ~$200 for 2 days of test daycare to determine that this was a person we did not trust with our dog. We happily made the 8-hour round-trip drive _twice_, on work nights, to drop off and pick up our dog from a family member rather than going forward with the boarding arrangement.
