The Canine Center

The Canine Center has a really great team at the office and in the training fields. I've enrolled my 2 doggos in the adult training bootcamp. Curtis is a great instructor, down to earth, makes classes fun, and just really knows his stuff. I would recommend coming in for an initial meeting to see what your dogs training needs are. They are so helpful. Don't hesitate to call. They can get you scheduled and get payment over the phone and of course help you with directions. I did get lost my first time! The area is fairly secluded off 290 and vast which gives dogs a lot of space to train. I will recommend to everyone who asks !

HIGHLY RECOMMEND! Our now 9 month old Golden started with puppy basics at 9 weeks with the Canine Center. They have a great staff, a wonderful location and professional trainers that use positive training techniques. We have taken their scent work, agility, rally and basic obedience classes with a variety of their training specialists. Our puppy was a handful and has developed into a well behaved, polite adolescent with the Canine Center's guidance. I highly recommend these trainers.

PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOURSELF OR YOUR DOGS THROUGH THIS! First red flag: we called for 2 weeks and left voicemails and noone returned our calls. It was not until my husband physically visited the office that he was able to get a consultation for our two dogs. Jane is not the best with people and hopefully communicates better with dogs as she was abrasive and condescending to us. My husband and I chose to overlook this as we understood her to be a professional and expert in her field. Jane passed us off to another trainer (Nicole) assuring us she had trained Nicole herself every day for at least 8 months and that we would be in the best hands. The very first "lesson" Jane scheduled for one of our dogs was for a "tutor day" and this involves dropping your dog off. We were perplexed as we had just spent 60 minutes explaining that our dogs had severe separation anxiety but Jane was supposed to be the expert. The tutor day is at least 6 hours, and we were called in less than two to pick up our dog as he had completely shut down and they could not work with them. We were in a panic as the person on the phone would not tell us what went wrong only that we needed to pick up our dog. It was horrifying! And, it set our dog back to even worse than he was before we began. We should have left then, but everyone makes mistakes, right? Further, scheduling was a ALWAYS a nightmare. We could not seem to get anyone to schedule any lessons for us and found it challenging to get a return call. If Jane and The Canine Center didn't have time, then they could have told us so we could go elsewhere for help. Instead, they happily took our money and my husband and I had to extend our stay in Austin by another month (costing us more money) because of the set back from Jane’s “mistake”. More so, we were double billed a few times and when I asked for my account to be corrected, the office staff was still unresponsive and “forgot” to address the issue. Office staff did eventually return my call to get it corrected. After extending our stay in the area another month, we were again with no lessons for more than a week. Nicole kept trying to get Jane to approve our lesson schedule and Jane kept disrespecting our time. Nicole was the only redeeming aspect out of the entire experience building rapport and developing trust with us and our dogs. To this day, our dogs still hate Jane and will not go anywhere near her, and we trust our dogs’ instincts when it comes to people. The office staff is nice and polite enough when they finally get around to responding. Finally, while I am driving to a lesson, Jane called me and told me Nicole had resigned and she didn’t have anyone to cover my lesson (an hour before!) and asked if we could reschedule. Are you ‘effin kidding me?? I had not heard from Jane since our first consultation and then she just thought I was going to allow my dogs to be put with just anyone?? And potentially her again?? Don’t be asinine! Fool me once yada yada…She just didn't want to lose our money. What's worse is I get a couple of emails dragging me into The Canine Center drama following Nicole's departure. The first email was cryptic and stated, “The Canine Center is seeking legal remedy and professional sanctions around animal welfare…”. A few days later, another email accusing Nicole of “certain circumstances when a dog’s welfare did not appear to be Nicole’s priority of the moment.” What?? Are you serious?? Jane had assured us we were in the next best hands aside from Jane’s herself! This was NOT our experience with Nicole at all and we were being dragged into a smear campaign! I emailed Jane in response letting her know that I thought her emails were “inflammatory and unprofessional.” I asked her to call me if she really wanted to know about our experience to learn from it and improve her business. As of this review, Jane has not reached out at all and so all I can think at this point is she really didn’t care about me, my husband, our experiences with her business, and certainly NOT my dogs.