I had posted a 5 star review for Pawsitive Strides previously, but took it down a couple of months ago. Since then, I do feel compelled to share my experience with Pawsitive Strides and why I no longer recommend this service. I had hired Lamu to care for my senior toy poodle for a week in July, and the first experience was pretty good! It's evident she's a dog lover and gave my dog a lot of cuddles. The only issue we had was that she had promised to text videos/photos and updates every day. There would be long periods between texts and we didn't receive regular updates or daily photos/videos as promised. This was not a deal breaker, though it was interesting to see that while she wasn't sending updates to us, she was adding regular photos of our dog to this Yelp page! We had to text repeatedly... "Is he ok?" because she wasn't communicating, so it helped us realize where her priorities lie when seeing a bunch of pics of our dog on here, while she left us on read!
We hired her for dog walking as well and dog walking might be ok. We canceled after 2 walks because we had a hard time getting confirmation/responses from her.
The main concern happened the second boarding stretch in September we hired her for. We asked her what time to drop off the pup, and she said 4 pm. We were there a little before 4, and texted/called her multiple times. It was over an hour later until she responded. She had fallen asleep. This is wildly unprofessional behavior. Imagine if we'd had a flight to catch. Because she had done a decent job with the July boarding, we let this slide. During his September stay, we again had issues with responsiveness and lack of updates.
He's almost 16, partially blind, partially deaf, and not great with other dogs. He has an old injury from an ACL tear and is small - 9ish pounds. Because of all of these factors, we told her repeatedly in person and in writing that we don't take him to dog parks and are very careful with his activity levels and interactions with large dogs/puppies. We explicitly stated "Do not take him to dog parks" and "Please keep him on leash at all times - he has been attacked by large dogs in the past." Mainly, we just needed someone to care for him, mostly at home, and not endanger him. The reason I'm giving 1 star is because she took him to a dog park and threw his tiny tennis ball. Apparently, a large dog grabbed the ball, demolished it, and then bit Sgt. pepper on his head in 3 places and scratched his eye. The worst part was, she did not tell us ANY OF THIS. She dropped him off and provided his destroyed ball and said another dog destroyed it, but withheld all details of his attack. As we got him settled back in our home, we noticed his eye was scratched and really red, and quickly noticed the 3 bloody scabs - 2 on his head and one on his neck! We texted her a couple of times asking what happened, and still she never responded. This behavior is incredibly irresponsible, so you can understand why I'm giving a 1 star review. I don't want any other pups to get attacked and injured under Lamu's care, so I'm hoping folks reading this review will take caution with hiring her. Perhaps if it's just for a short walk around the block, it might be ok. But in terms of boarding or long-term care, our experience is that Lamu is not responsive and does not follow critical directions, which ultimately led to our dog getting attacked. Her failure to communicate this to us is a huge red flag. It took weeks for her to finally bring back his belongings she'd forgotten to bring when she dropped him off. I had to text her constantly to ask her to bring back these items.
I would encourage folks to look elsewhere and avoid this service at all costs. read more