I will second what the previous reviewer wrote back in 2012. How I wish I had come across that review before scheduling Shelia to perform her "training" service with my dog. If I could only leave zero or negative starts on my review I would! To say that I was extremely upset and felt completely shamed upon her departure from our session is an understatement!
DO NOT USE Sheila!!! I cannot express that enough! Apparently she also has 2 yelp pages and the name of her business website is misleading as it is not the same name as her actual business. (cards, paperwork etc is a different name)
I will start by saying that my husband and I rescued a 1 year old German Shepherd whom we had for less than a week when we started researching dog training. We have countless years of experience with owning dogs and we already had 2 small/medium size neutered male dogs in our home upon adoption of the shepherd. However, since it had been quite a while since we had a large dog in our home we were in need of a refresher & some advice. We adopted an amazing shepherd. Smart, sweet, quick leaner and great addition to our family. Given that she was adopted, the transition amongst her to our small/medium neutered males started off challenging. The shepherd seemed to be on high alert, in full on attack mode to our boys. So for about the first 1-2 weeks we were cautious separating them all from each other for all of their own safety. It was stressful and I did feel desperate as it was rough on my husband and I playing musical dogs.
So that was when my research continued and we were navigating towards in home dog training to curb the issue of what we believed was the shepherd's "small dog aggression". We came across Sheila's website, which is online as Ventura County Dog Training (not Sitting Pretty as she uses for the actual business name) and I reached out pleading my case via email. Sheila followed up with an hour long phone call which at the time we thought was a sign of good things to come. However during her phone call she went on and on about a very particular brand of dog food to which "she had no affiliation with" but that we needed to start feeding to the shepherd right away. We didn't give this too much thought and in the end our desperation lead to her coming to our home for a session.
Both my husband and myself had to request a day off of work for our appointment. Since we work during the day and Shelia is against performing training in the evening and was somehow booked for many weeks in advance on the weekends we had no other choice. She was then 20 minutes late for our 12pm appointment, blaming her directions. However as we set the appointment over the phone days prior she had clearly stated she had in fact been in our neighborhood before and knew just exactly where and how to get there. Guess the streets magically moved from where she knew they were last LOL!
As soon as she entered our home instantly she claimed our dog was looking "too" aggressive and was about to attack her. She claimed she has been in a yard with 3 dogs coming to attack her and the hair on the back of her neck was standing up making her feel the say way she did around those "3 attack dogs". That should have been our first major red flag since our shepherd loves everyone and everything meeting neighbors, children, family etc. She had NEVER showed signs of aggression other than we thought to our small dogs. But alas, she was newly adopted we didn't want to take our chances and continued on listening to Sheila's BS.
I wont go into every single ridiculous detail, because it was all ridiculous and this will be the longest review in history. But in a matter of almost 3 hours all we had learned is that our Shepherd gets bored easily when not challenged. She spent most of her time wanting to lay down as there was NO ACTUAL TRAINING taking place. Sheila the "trainer" NEVER touched our dog, not even her leash ONCE. She only instructed my husband in a very rude and unprofessional way of how he should handle the dog. She advised us to never command the dog using her name, or touching the animal. She claimed "all dogs automatically come programmed to know the word sit once they are 8 weeks old" Really? That is beyond laughable!! Not every home even speaks the same language!! All session all we worked on was "SIT". To top it off she completely insulted my husband and I trying to dig into our background as to why we had so little patience. Really? So little patience? We spent 3 hours telling a dog to "SIT" not touching her, not showing her the action not even allowed to look her in the eye! Of course we were losing patience! So was our dog!
About 80% of the session was also again as was on the first phone call to preach to that us we purchase a very specific brand of dog food. She kept reiterating "she had no connection to the company at all but to mention her name when purchasing to get a better discount". That is such an insult to our intelligence I can let yo read more