I have posted this to google but I want everyone to have a chance to understand what could happen…read moreif you trust this company. This is my families experience.
Our experience with this company was deeply upsetting, and I sincerely regret ever trusting them with our puppy.
We enrolled Scout when he was only approximately 3-4 months old and paid roughly $4,000 for his training. We entrusted this company with an incredibly young puppy believing he would be cared for appropriately while receiving professional training. Instead, Scout came home behaving like a different dog, and we have been dealing with the consequences ever since.
When Scout was returned to us, he was covered in his own vomit and smelled so terrible that we immediately had to put him in the bath. Given the amount of money we paid and the level of care we were led to expect, seeing our puppy returned to us in that condition was completely unacceptable.
The professionalism of our experience was also concerning. When Irini met with us to demonstrate the e-collar, she arrived wearing sweats and made sexual remarks that made us extremely uncomfortable. This was supposed to be a professional training interaction regarding our puppy, and the comments were inappropriate and completely unnecessary.
The e-collar itself is another major issue. The original two-week program we signed up for did NOT include e-collar training. We were subsequently persuaded to extend Scout's stay by approximately another week and a half, and that extension included e-collar training--something we were not adequately informed about beforehand. Had we understood what was going to occur, we would never have agreed to it.
More importantly, the training did not produce the results we were promised. What we got instead was a puppy who returned home with behaviors and fear responses he did not have before he left.
One of the most disturbing examples is Scout's behavior around food. He now sometimes has a fear reaction while eating in which he suddenly runs away from his food as though he has become frightened by something. We do not know exactly what happened to him while he was in their care, and I will not claim to know something I did not personally witness. What I can say with certainty is that this was not a behavior we recognized in him before this program, and seeing our dog react fearfully to something as basic as eating is heartbreaking.
Scout did not come home the same puppy we sent away.
I also want to be very clear that we DID attempt to resolve these concerns with the company. I followed up with them many times. Ashley eventually told me that I would be able to meet with the owner of the company in Sacramento for follow-up training sessions so that we could actually receive what we had paid for. She told me she would get back to me with a time and location.
She never did.
There was no time. No location. No follow-up training session.
After spending approximately $4,000, repeatedly reaching out, expressing our concerns, and being told that additional training would be arranged, simply failing to follow through was incredibly unprofessional.
I cannot know everything that occurred while Scout was away from us because we were not there. I can only speak to the condition in which he was returned to us, the interactions we personally had with the trainers, the promises that were made and never fulfilled, and the changes we observed in our puppy afterward. Based on those experiences, I deeply regret placing Scout in this company's care.
We trusted professionals to care for and train an extremely young puppy. Instead, we were left feeling as though we paid thousands of dollars for an experience that caused him fear rather than helping him.
Scout deserved better. We deserved better.
I would never entrust another dog to this company, and I strongly encourage anyone considering a board-and-train program here to think very carefully before leaving their dog in their care--especially a young puppy who cannot tell you what happened while you were gone.