Canine College, Bow Wow Resort

I have been boarding my dog here at Canine College for the past few years. I wish I had found them many years ago!!! My dog a small mixed breed, 15+ yrs old and a history of getting nervous when she is away from the family. Entering and leaving other boarding places has always been difficult on her. I have nothing negative to say about the other places, I always felt that they did very good work - fact is that my dog has always been on the nervous side. With Canine College, each experience has been excellent. My dog enters the building calmly, nudges up to the staff and has no issues going with them out of the main room to her boarding crate. Pick up is just as good. She walks out without showing any signs of stress and we leave calmly. Once she is home, it is like we never left. Just a happy, playful little mutt. I am very happy with the services provided by the team at Canine College. Very friendly, knowledgeable about animal care and super responsive to questions. I recommend them highly.

This place has very aggressive training methods that are not suitable for all breeds of dog. About three years ago I sent my dog (a young Shih Tzu) to stay with them for a week as a part of their boarding training program. I wrote the instructions in duplicate of what I hoped to achieve. These were: work on her reactivity to other dogs, have her okay with being in a crate for airline travel, and get her more comfortable around cats. After a week of her being there I came in for the last session and saw little to no progress on the first goal of having her become less reactive to other dogs and no work was done on the other goals (it was essentially forgotten about and not talked about until I reminded them). At the last lesson they tried to incorporate getting her to be OK in a carrier for travel. Their method consisted of forcing my dog's head down into the carrier as she yelped and resisted them, making choking noises after. Although I never said anything to them then and there, I was traumatized by watching them do this to my 15lb Shih Tzu. Giventhat I spent a lot of money to pay for the training program and none of the goals were met (and no significant progress was made), the whole ordeal was a complete waste of money. It also was in stark contrast to me asking them whether they used positive reinforcement methods in their training methods (to which they responded affirmatively) before I left my dog with them.