Had a terrible experience with this company, and recommend that interactions with them are avoided at all costs. We adopted an incredibly anxious dog and sought specialist help from Balanced Dog. We were assigned to Fabian, and we were not aware that he has no formal training experience. We signed a contract (which we felt was strange but being new to Germany assumed was the norm) that locked us in to 4 weeks of dog walks, after 2 dog walks and one training session (not inclusive of the contract), we were shocked by the methods used and tried to start a dialogue about our concerns. We felt that holding an unsocialised and fearful dog by the head and neck, and repeatedly allowing numerous other dogs to approach was highly stressful for our animal, as was forcing submission and repeatedly using heavy-handed physical corrections in an environment that was filled with other dogs and therefore terrifying to an incredibly fearful animal. Our dog has never fully recovered from this experience, is unable to enter the park where the training session occurred, and began going to the toilet in the house- something she had never previously done. It was impossible to reach Fabian as his mobile phone did not work, and it took him 4 days to respond to our email. By which point we decided to cut our losses and leave their services.
We were informed that we were tied in to a dog walking contract and, this contract was in place as other customers had attempted to leave at short notice in the past (warning bells). Linn Heinzel (the one qualified person in the company, who we never actually met, yet still paid the full training amount for a session with her intern) informed us that as we were cancelling on the 14th day of our contract we were still liable to pay a full 6 weeks of walking fees, despite our contract being for 1 month. When we informed her that in European contract law, the 14th day is inclusive of the cancellation time, she retorted that there was in fact no cancellation period and we were still liable to pay. After many back and forth emails, she informed us that she was passing the issue on to her lawyer. We requested the details of her lawyer and heard nothing back until over 3 months later we received a Mahnbescheid, that was launched over 3 months after the end of our contract. These people are bullies- their training ethos is to bully the dogs in to submission and this is how they attempted to interact with us. read more
