Balanced Dogs

Disappointed with the Experience & Business Practices My wife and I enrolled our puppy in Dee’s Confident Companion program at Balanced Dogs, hoping for guidance and improvement in our dog’s behavior. Unfortunately, the program was not conducive to our lifestyle or needs, and we struggled significantly with implementing Dee’s methods. We were not seeing meaningful progress, and ultimately, we decided to enroll our puppy in a two-week board and train program instead, which yielded far better results and was much more worth the cost. However, the most frustrating part of our experience has been Dee’s lack of trustworthiness and integrity as a business owner. After 4 weeks, we made the difficult decision to cancel the program, which included originally a 12-week service with an additional 12 weeks of support. After months of back-and-forth negotiations and long periods of unresponsiveness from Dee, we finally mutually agreed via text on a fair refund. Despite this agreement, Dee has since gone completely silent and has failed to issue the refund. When we first signed up, we specifically asked Dee what would happen if the program wasn’t the right fit, and she assured us that we would work something out if needed. That promise was not upheld. This is the first negative review I have ever written for any company, but I feel compelled to warn others. Proceed with caution.

We highly recommend working with Dee for any and all dog needs! We rescued a 10 month old puppy this spring and added her to our family with two other dogs and a cat. Within the first week we discovered our new member was extremely anxious (she escaped once and was gone for hours), was up through the night and not housebroken. This prompted us to connect with Dee where we collaborated on our goals together, and set our focus on reducing anxiety, potty and crate training, and teaching hand signals to keep our pup from bolting out the door. Two months later, we are THRILLED to report that our puppy’s anxiety levels are down dramatically, she is 99% potty trained, fully crate trained and sleeping through the night and not a single attempt at an escape. An added bonus is seeing the benefit all of this has had on our other dogs and how quickly the puppy and cat were able to integrate. We did our meetings with Dee over FaceTime, starting at 3 to 4 times a week, and naturally decreasing as Dee’s program was so effective. Dee is extremely knowledgeable, provides clear instruction, and has a way of explaining situations from a dog’s perspective that makes it easy to understand the interventions. Scheduling time with her was easy. We greatly appreciated her being firm about following guidelines because it kept us on track. However, she is also understanding and flexible when we expressed needing adjustments based on our own lifestyle or goals for our family. We have a calm and cohesive family and are beyond grateful for Dee who was integral in this process.

wanted to pass how on incredibly helpful Dee from Balanced Dogs Santa Monica has been in helping us navigate the tricky waters with Freya and Frodo becoming family. Dee was so good at assessing the situation, and charting a clear course to succeed here. We absolutely could not have gotten to where we are without her help. She does behavior training kind of like Better Help, its all remote. Send her videos of your dog's behavior, and she examines their body language and makes recommendations. Its actually much more effective than in person sessions where the trainer may never see the problem behavior. Anyway, if you need help with a dog's behavior issues. I could not recommend Dee's expertise highly enough.