My wife and I adopted Travis, a 14-month old Jack Russell Terrier mix, in April of 2023. He had…read morebeen abused and was extremely timid when we got him. At a certain point, he became very aggressive toward visitors or anyone whom he deemed "a threat" to us. He bit a few people, and we started to search for a trainer. Pet Peeves and its owner, Wendy Kelly, came recommended by our veterinarian as well as others. We were taken aback by an extremely high fee for her services, which cut a large hole into our savings, but we thought Travis was worth the effort.
For several months, Wendy would come work with Travis weekly, and she gave us homework. Knowing this was about training us as well as our dog, we worked at it. Some of it was difficult, some not so much. His progress was slow, and Wendy took him away for a week to work with him. That produced promising results; we learned how to spot his aggressive tendencies and how to counter them. Wendy had had some health setbacks, and they would surface on occasion. At a certain point, she became less dependable, coming to appointments late, a few times not at all, rescheduling, and having chronic transportation problems. She also developed a penchant for interesting us in her products. We went for a period where there were no sessions, and we worked with her for nearly a year. Travis made considerable progress, but the aggressive side still appeared at times. Wendy became less dependable, and she started to blame us for his lack of progress. We both work during the day, and aren't able to give the level of training she was expecting. We confronted Wendy on her lack of consistency, as this was necessary for hus improvement and our ability to engage him. Wendy became quite defensive, said she couldn't do any more with him, especially since we wouldn't do the homework (not true), and essentially fired us. At one time she had been apologetic about our taking on such a difficult pet, and was (overly?) eager to rehouse him when that seemed a possibility. The holidays came and went, we figured time might heal, and reached out to her with a progress report at the beginning of the year, and a wish to resume training, feeling he was close to being "cured." We also said that, due to her money-back guarantee on her website, we would like 1/3 of our money returned if she didn't agree to resume training, feeling he was 2/3 of the way there. Our request was texted and emailed, and we followed up in the spring after getting no response initially. We are still awaiting a response. We feel we were taken advantage of after acting on good faith, and even apologized for putting her on the spot. It seemed she was more interested in selling 'Wendy' rather than finishing a job for which we paid a large amount of money. Very disappointed.