Our decision to put our dog, Taylor, into Sit Means Sit ended up costing her her life and us the worst heartbreak.
Our fur baby is dead thanks to Sit Means Sit. Taylor went missing under the care of her trainer, HP. The story we are told was that Taylor was "let out" by a worker while she was boarding with HP at his home.
Taylor is a walking piece of our heart. She was a very sweet and timid rescue dog that we loved very much. Being a rescue, she's always dealt with extreme anxiety which started off as fear of other dogs and people which gradually grew to aggression towards these things. She was never aggressive to us or our other rescue dog, in fact, she was extremely attached to us. However, we would refrain from taking her to the dog park and she no longer got to go with us to new places because of her new found dog and people aggression.
We decided to invest in Sit Means Sit to improve her and our quality of life. We were so excited about the idea of being able to take her to the park without worrying about her biting another dog or have guests over without her barking or trying to bite them. We met with Sit Means Sit and we opted for the weekly program instead of the immersion.
We met HP or Kritter for training once a week since May. During one of the times due to HP being late, he let gave us and another customer 2 days of boarding which was like a mini immersion program. My boyfriend and I were out of town in August and decided that after 3 months with Sit Means Sit, Taylor could work on her separation anxiety and training at the same time with a trainer that we trusted. Not in a million years would we ever imagine that the person we trusted the most with our dog would be the one who lost her for us for good.
My boyfriend dropped Taylor off Friday evening to her dismay. She cried to see him go. He thought it was tough love and she would be a stronger dog when he picked her up on Sunday. Turns out the person that couldn't handle it was HP. Saturday morning, he called us to tell us that Taylor was let out by a worker. He promised to have her back in his care by Saturday afternoon, that it was a "closed" neighborhood and she couldn't have gone far. If she wasn't back by the afternoon, he will put up LOST posters. He claimed to have put 60 posters up.
Come Sunday evening when my boyfriend went to pick her up, she is still not back in his care. There was not 1 lost poster in sight... which HP claimed that the City of Houston took down. In the upcoming weeks, we printed, posted, handed out, hundreds of posters and yard signs. To this day 2 months later, whenever we go back to his neighborhood on a Taylor lead from our posters and signs, we still find them up, so it's peculiar about the 60 he claims that the City of Houston took down in 1 day.
As consolation, HP did refund us our entire training fee, helped us put out posters and yard signs (though we suspect it was more of a PR play to save face since it was organized by the president of the Animal Justice League who lived in his neighborhood), hired a dog search and rescue (although promised to set dog traps in the area the rescue claimed she was in and never followed through), and would follow a Taylor lead if we aren't available to drive to his area. We appreciate the effort because there is no legal obligation for him to do any of those things, however, nothing mends the broken heart we've endured from losing our dog.
We hope that our story can help avoid any future customers potential heartbreak and think twice before putting their fur baby into Sit Means Sit.
We really hoped that this story would've ended differently with an obedient Taylor who can play at the park and a glowing yelp review. From May to July, it was on track to being just that. The weeks we spent in training, we saw immense improvement with Taylor and we really like HP and Kritter.
However, that's not how the story ended. After 2 months of searching endlessly for her, we found her dead, hit by a car, only a few blocks away from HP's house. We've been dealing with immense heartbreak and trauma to find our baby that way. read more