I will re-share the comment I have already left once (and had removed by Yelp because "We wanted to let you know that we've removed your review of The Doghouse. Your review was brought to our attention by the Yelp community, and we found that it fell outside our Content Guidelines as it did not appear to describe a customer experience.").
By the way, given the above email from Yelp, I now understand why this business has so many high reviews... The others get removed. How convenient.
So now I will share what I shared before, and add more details of my 'customer experience'. Hopefully Yelp, and its community, won't find this one to be too general.
I called and spoke with Carrie and her husband. I had already worked with multiple trainers with Lexi, and had had no luck as of yet. I was nearing the end of my rope, knowing we needed help and being unsure what to do. We waited weeks for our appointment, with great anticipation given all the wonderful reviews that I'd come across.
We show up on a stormy day, after driving 30 minutes, and are ushered inside. Carrie and I sit and talk for about 30 minutes, and everything is great. I'm feeling good, and excited b/c I feel like I've finally found someone I can trust to help my dog (and my family).
Carrie exchanges the Herm Sprenger collar / leash I'm using for a leash that looks more to me like a giant noose (someone has since told me that it's something like a horse lead... I don't work with horses so I'm not sure), and we go out to the back yard. We stay on this side of a giant fence, and an assistant brings one dog at a time out to the other side of the fence.
Lexi reacts to each one (obviously. That's the problem we were there to resolve. She's dog-reactive), and as she does, Carrie lifts the noose so that Lexi's front legs are off the ground & Carrie is effectively choking her + depriving her of oxygen.
My first instinct was horror, frankly. I had no idea that this was part of their 'training' program. Had i had ANY indication of that ahead of time, we would not have bothered making an appointment.
I fought my first instinct (that was my mistake and one for which I still feel guilty to this day) and let Carrie continue on. I actually wondered if this might be what's required to help 'fix' my dog.
I let Carrie know that I was not comfortable with this & she let me know that she heard me and understood what I was saying... and also wanted to clarify that it hurts the dog much more to be euthanized due to aggression.
Ok, I suppose that's a fair point. And still... this is not the training method for us. I let her know that I would not be willing to choke my dog as part of her training program. She didn't agree, but understood my point of view. I paid for the time that we were there, and then I drove home in tears feeling like a massive jerk for subjecting my dog to this experience. I was so ashamed of myself for staying through the entire hour that I didn't even give my husband specific information about what had happened... only told him that we wouldn't be working with that company. Ever.
So there you go. There's my customer experience. You may not like it. You may wish I hadn't shared it. But anyone considering working with this company has a right to know, BEFORE GOING, that this is the training method used. Or at least, it was in my instance. Neither Yelp, nor its community, has any right to try to silence my voice due to disagreeing with my perspective. This was my experience. Period.
Below is what I initially shared.
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You should be aware before going, as I wasn't (b/c this information doesn't appear to be posted publicly anywhere), that Carrie's training method consists of depriving your dog of oxygen by hanging them up by the neck (front feet off the ground) until they stop reacting. Clearly, based on all the positive reviews here, she gets results. I am personally not willing to have my results come in this manner. You'll need to make your own decision. I recommend asking plenty of questions and watching her training methods for your specific dog before agreeing to anything. read more