I met this client and began working with her last December when I did an evaluation of her chihuahua. Her dog was wreaking havoc in her senior living complex with his barking and aggressive behaviors. She told me that she would have to take him to the shelter if she wasn’t able to get help. My client was on a fixed income and the cost of private lessons would have been a financial burden on her. It was Christmas time, so I offered to do her lessons at a significant discount off my regular rates, saving her $75.00 per lesson. My client was very good about doing her follow up work in between lessons and we made great progress with her dog. About 15 minutes into our last lesson, my client told me she hadn’t been feeling well that day. She also had a contractor there working in her apartment which made it difficult to do the lesson. I offered to reschedule and I did not charge her even though I made the 45 minute trip just to do that lesson. Before I left, she told me that she may be going into the hospital because she was having a Crohn’s disease flare up. Prior to that, my client had begun to cross some boundaries by texting me at all hours of the night. The last time this happened was at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, which woke up my whole household, and I was upset about that. When she didn’t get back to me about rescheduling, I assumed that she was either in the hospital or that she was upset because I complained about her 5:00 am call. I was shocked and hurt when I received notice of her negative review, especially when considering all that I had done to help her over the past four and a half months. I am at a loss for words.

Prior to starting any type of training or behavior modification program, I provide a free in home assessment at no obligation to the client. This was a situation where the owner was cited and was required by animal control to work with a trainer because her German Shepherd dogs had a history of breaking out of the yard and attacking neighborhood dogs. I went over to do the assessment and found that the problem was much more than just the dog aggression. These two dogs were completely out of control. But the disturbing part was that the older German Shepherd dog was constantly tormenting the younger shepherd, so much so, that the young dog has developed self injurious behaviors. The young dog has so much anxiety that he spins and attacks his own tail to cope with the stress of the older dog tormenting him. He does it so hard and so fast that when he spins around and misses his tail, he takes out chunks of the wall and the couch with his teeth. She hired me, we agreed on a training plan and I prepared my report and sent it in to animal control. Once the client received a copy of my report, she became angry and said that my assessment was wrong. She said her dogs were under control and she asked if in lieu of training, I would instead take the dogs for ten hours worth of pack walks and report to animal control that I was training them. This client had no concern regarding the aggressive behaviors in attacking neighborhood dogs, nor did she care about what was happening to the young dog, she just wanted to get through the training the quickest way possible. I could not in good conscious do what she asked just to satisfy the county. Her dogs were dangerous and what she was allowing the older dog to do to the young dog was in my opinion, abusive. I opted not to work with her so she wrote the negative review.