Alpha K9 U, LLC

Posted a year ago got taken down! We sent our 3 1/2 month old Shepherd, puppy to be boarded and trained for a three week intensive training program. Before the program, we had taught him how to sit, and lay down with the use of treats, we had weaned him off of the treats in about two weeks. After we got there, our trainer showed us what he could do only using treats. He was listening to his trainer, but she had to bend all the way over to the ground to get him to lay down ( We were able to just point down three weeks prior before we dropped him off) I said something immediately and she said oh well puppies just regress in their training. (It was as if he just started learning these skills but in the updates I was told he was getting good at them?) Which was quite confusing for me. But we took her word for it, and continued. We did sit, down, and stay. ( Keep in mind that he could already do sit and down when we dropped him off).Then we went and paid, because at this point we were still trusting their word that he was going to be able to do it in the regular world. When we got into the parking lot, a dog was walking in as we were leaving, and he immediately became reactive and started stepping forward and barking, and no matter the amount of corrections,or treats or anything he would not regain focus. He wasn’t able to do the tasks at all. We stayed in the parking lot to see if he was able to do any of the walking or down sit or stay with only cars passing in the street that was about 75 feet away so you could hear the cars.This is supposedly a fully trained dog at this point) He was unable to show us any of the tasks in the parking lot,every single time anything moved a tree, a leaf, a car there was a tractor in the next building over he was unable to do it. We gave them the benefit of the doubt Again, and took him home to see how he would react, Once he was an environment he’s been in before. When we were in our front yard He again would not respond to any of the tasks or anything. When we got inside, He walked around and sniffed and got reacquainted with everything fairly calm! Then we took him into the backyard so that he could sniff there and then we brought him back in. After this is the point where we got extremely frustrated because we couldn’t get him to do any of the tasks in the parking lot we couldn’t get him to do any of the tasks in the front yard and then we try doing them in the house with minimal things around him and he was still unable to do any of them. He also jumped on the counter, and the table which he’s never done before. Once he got distracted, he would not refocus whether we had the prong color on him or had the treats in our hands or anything. We understand that you train dogs starting with treats, and then, you wean them off of those, and you’re able to give the commands. We understand that he is a puppy and puppies get excited. The problem we have is that we sent him off for three weeks to be fully trained At $1500 And not only is he not fully trained he is still in the first step Of learning the skills that we have already taught him, and he had mastered before we dropped him off. We called to ask for a refund because we are going to go in a different direction with our training because the method they use is not working for us In an actual environment. If he lived in a house with zero distractions and that’s it, he would be fine getting trained at this place but that’s not how the real world is so so we can’t have a dog who is only able to perform tasks in an extremely controlled environment. They Kept telling us that it’s just because he’s a puppy. ( I was able to train him to sit and go down with treats, and then wean him off while he was even younger than when they had him) The only other thing they offered was to have the owner do more classes with him to see if she could fix it. which we appreciate the offer but at this point if the method they are using is not working with our dog, we just want A refund to go somewhere else because our dog was promised to be trained and he is not.

We have taken multiple dogs here for training and boarding. The staff is amazing and they take such great care of our dogs. The trainers know what they are doing and you can tell they have a passion for what they do! We've trained with Maddie and Hannah and have had an amazing experience with them. Kelly and Roger have top notch people at Alpha K9! We always make sure to reccomend this place to anyone we know who needs training or a place to board their dogs!