Kai's Obedience LLC

First, let me give you some background about myself and my two dogs. I am a 33 year old female that has spent a majority of my adult career in the animal welfare/health industry. My dogs are a now 7 month old female Doberman and a 5 year old male Doberman. I started training with my dogs this last October of 2018 because I wanted to give my puppy a good foundation and to help my other older dog with overcoming his social anxiety and focusing on me. My first initial consultation with Derrick was very impressive. He spent a good 30-45 minutes with myself and just one of my dogs. He had a great sales pitch and I paid a large sum of money and agreed via contract with Derrick to meet certain goals with both dogs. Over the course of our private and semi-private lessons I began to experience some things that concerned me, such as Derrick’s tools and training methods of using pinch and electric collars in his training sessions. I was never against and still am not against either of these tools because they have been shown to be very useful when used correctly in the right situations. During the sessions, 95% of the time Derrick will NEVER handle your dog (he’s training you), but he will correct your dog if you refuse to. There was an instance where I saw him hang another client’s dog up by their pinch collar and moved them to the desired place on the platform box. This should have been my hint to RUN, but I convinced myself to stay because of the money I had invested. While my puppy advanced quickly, my adult dog did not. Just like with a child too much negative enforcement creates negative reactions. Training now became a source of his anxiety to him and now he is even more anxious about going to the training facility and in public places. At this time Derrick made the decision that we should take a break from the older dogs training and focus more on the puppy. As training continued, Derrick and I, both agreed that it was time to test my puppy out of Canine Good Citizen Title. At the evening training the day before the CGC test Derrick told me to hang my puppy up by the pinch collar because she was biting at the leash. At first I was unwilling but then I realized Derrick would come do it if I did not, so I fault I had no choice but to comply. At that moment I decided we would no longer be training with Derrick. It is completely out of my nature to harm an animal yet I felt like I was forced too. While I was blessed with a very willing and forgiving puppy who turned out to be all I wanted and more I cannot, with good conscience, recommend Derrick or his company Kais Dog Training Academy to any animal loving person. Derrick has a way of making you feel manipulated, he will degrade you and make you feel incapable of handling your dog. I regret allowing him to be a part of both mine and my dog’s lives for the last 3 months. Training should be fun and rewarding for the handler and their dog. If you love your pets, please research and proceed with caution with any pet training school. Do not believe what you hear or read from online forms or company employees.