Harmony Canine Training

Overall pretty upsetting and stressful experience. We did the community training class with our belgian malinois a year ago. We had problems from the beginning. We paid and didn't receive any information about class details for over a month, this was after reaching out to them several times through phone, their website and email. When we finally did get a response we started classes in early March. Then the pandemic hit and we were about half way through the courses and had to understandably stop. After a few months I heard of other training courses that were operating and practicing social distancing so I reached out a few times to see if they had plans on continuing training. They said classes were running and we could continue. Great! So I asked when exactly, and for some other details and received radio silence for over a month! At that point I was so frustrated with their correspondence I requested a refund instead of continuing the classes. We could not get details about classes and I was tried of waiting weeks to months just to be acknowledged. My first request for the refund, citing the lack of communication as the reason for our request, went ignored of course, for over a week. So I sent another request asking for the same refund, this time she responded with a super passive aggressive, unprofessional email that clearly highlighted how unorganized they were. It would do a lot for their business if they became better organized and adopted a professional attitude and correspondence. I would like to blame the pandemic for the problems we had but there were clear early warning signs, months before any craziness started. Throughout the entire experience I had to reach out several times for basic information. A simple email, soon after payment, including a date, time, and place for training would have been great. And an email offering to continue courses when they reopened would have also been greatly appreciated. But from the lack of communication and redundancy in emails, it was clear we would have been forgotten about, and our money would have been wasted, if I had not been persistently emailing them. The training was okay, nothing too impressive. We have worked with other trainers before and they were not offering anything too different or special, which was disappointing. We hoped they could offer us more because of their experience with beligian malinois but this wasn't the case.

There were so many red flags that I just decided to ignore because I was so desperate to get my two rescues the help and training that they needed. From the very first email/phone call, it took forever to get a response and it was like playing phone tag. Communication was seriously lacking. Even the day we were supposed to drop our first pup off to them, the drop off time changed, not a big deal at the time, but then when we were dropping our second pup off and the drop off time and day changed as well. A minor inconvenience. One pup was there for 5 weeks and the other was there for three. I had such high expectations as I was told that they were both making so much progress. (After constantly begging for updates on progress) Well, when they got home, nothing had changed at all. One pup was still peeing in the house, growling at strangers on the street, and the other pup was still having issues pulling me while walking and not following commands. After an email to the trainer about the situation, I was told that she would “come up with a plan”. My husband and I waited and waited for a response from her with this “plan” to help make up for four thousand dollars and 5 weeks of time lost. Well, when I contacted her telling her that we’ve been very patient waiting for her response, she basically responded with incorrect assumptions that we were not following her guidelines and homework and that we were not using the correct type of leash for the dogs. All of which is completely incorrect. We bought new leashes that she recommended and we practice the homework and commands all the time. Nothing has changed for my dog’s behaviors at all. Now we have to get new trainers for the dogs, which is obviously going to cost more time and money. My advice, go with a different business for your pups. The business owners can respond to this and say whatever they want, but I have every text and email saved and it shows time stamps as to how long it took to ever get a response from them, and how unprofessional their response was when we actually did receive it.