Come, Sit, Stay & Play.

I was recommended this place for training from the doggy daycare my puppy attends. I know word of mouth is a good way to support a business, and I valued the opinion of the woman at the doggy daycare. After reviewing the website, it indicated that the only way to see the training and pricing schedule was on Facebook. I figured there have to be more people that reach out to this business that are also not on Facebook and it wouldn’t be a problem for me to call and either get pricing information or if I had to - leave a voicemail and someone would get back to me. I called the following day (April 1st) and left a nice voicemail requesting a call back for more information on training classes and pricing (and did indicate I do not use Facebook). It is now April 11th and I have not heard back at all. I completely understand how someone could get busy and maybe not be able to call back that day, the following, or even two days after - but 10 days? They must not need the business or care about new leads for business. As a small business owner myself, I wouldn’t let a lead go for days without hearing from me. Highly unprofessional and unsustainable business practice…. I will spend my hard earned money elsewhere.

Scheduled a training class (weekly group class) with Todd directly. Confirmed timing and location. Showed up on the first day of class and he never showed. The building was hard to find, completely dark with no street lights at all. I messaged him and while he read the messages, he never responded to me at all. A waste of an hour getting there, sitting there, and getting home. I'm glad I didn't pay for the class and have him ghost after payment.

Unfortunately this trainer allows aggressive dogs in the regular class, and when we talked about switching to a different day, he told us to get a prong collar to control our dogs reaction. Only after we quit were we offered to join a calmer class. For context, our dog is 14lbs and the larger dog was 70lb+ and would snap and lunge at the other dogs in class. Our pup is now dealing with reactivity due to repeated exposure to an aggressive dog, and major confidence issues that he didn't have before. The training space is small, so we were always close to the problem dog. In the beginning, our dog was pretty quiet in class. He's only a year old, so he did show some excitement. By the end, he was constantly scared. He was corrected quite hard with the prong in class for reacting to the other dog barking, growling, and lunging, and tried to bite the trainer in reaction to the correction. His reactions were really hard to control by the end. You could tell the correction was painful because he squealed. The purpose of correcting with the prong was to regain his focus but it didn't have that effect. Recently, he snapped at a kid out of fear when before he was enthusiastic about meeting people. Now he cowers and snaps if they go to pet him. I fear it is because of the use of aversives in class. I would not recommend this place for small and timid dogs. Our dog was so good with meeting other dogs before this class and lived with large breeds in his foster home. Now he can barely walk across the street from another dog and can't be trusted with children or strangers. He's limited to interacting with the dogs he met before starting class because now he's just so scared and immediately gets defensive with hackles raised and barking. This trainer's methods are also a bit old fashioned and don't use any sort of motivation such as toys or treats. It's all forcing your dog and getting them to do what you want by placing them in sits with your hands and pushing them down and then giving verbal praise. He's quick to resort to aversives and recommends a prong to pretty much everyone for every problem without instruction on proper placement or correction timing. It may work for more biddable breeds, but our mutt did not respond well at all and we have a lot of work ahead of us to fix what 5 weeks in this class did. Would not recommend.

I was referred to this place by several people and I used to see them train on the Southside. Site says they are open till 830pm, called when open per site. Person answer the phone with hello and I had to ask if I am speaking to this company, she stated yes but we are closed call back later and hung up on me. No when and was rude. When I try to message them before I had to call. All other training places took their time in calling me or messaging me in a timely matter with info and help