Dottie is the best! She trains the parents on how to be with their dogs…read more She gets right to the point, doesn't waste your time or the dogs time. She is firm with her instruction but if you follow what Dottie says you and your dog will be much happier....And the dogs respond. We had about five lessons with Dottie and our dog has been perfect ever since. If we, or our dog acts up, we know we can always go back and get a refresher course. I wouldn't go anywhere else to have my dog trained. PERIOD!

Our Miniature Schnauzer puppy is a handful! She is our third Schnauzer and we know how stubborn…read morethey can be. But they are beautiful, loving, loyal and very protective, especially to their primary caregiver and that's me. I felt I was thoroughly prepared for this adoption with the crate, proper collar, toys, treats, premium food and baby gates. I watched hours of training videos on YouTube - stay at home covid guidelines gave me plenty of time. I was ready! When we picked her up I was smitten. She was so sweet and loving even with those razor sharp baby teeth. My positive training methods were working! I kept a log of her feeding, play and nap times. She was a dream puppy to crate and potty train. Then she hit 3 months, her vaccines were completed and she was ready for the outside world.I had leash trained her in my house and in the yard with great results. Her first walk outside was a nightmare! And the nightmare continued as she pulled and seemed to choke the entire walk. I was stumped. I tried again and again, to no avail. I needed a trainer. My son used Dottie to train his two Dobermans and they were incredibly mannerly and obedient. So I called and arranged a session in my home. Dottie made recommendations for the tools that would help regain control, and helped me to see how the way I approached training needed to be more authoritative. She is not only skilled in training dogs, but in training owners how to be successful with positive reinforcement. She shares her knowledge and reasons why certain techniques nor tools work better for the individual dog. She knows dog body language and showed me the subtitles of my own body language and tone of voice that were not working. She was very encouraging and patient. It could be a coincidence, but the negative reviews I read on Yelp seemed to be all men. I get how some men might be intimidated by Dottie's confidence in her method of training. But she has given me confidence that my relationship with my dog will be enhanced by the great training we have both received from this incredible woman. I highly recommend.

Chandra and her dogs are awesome. Chandra helped me understand my reactive dog's behavior and body…read morelanguage to decrease his reactions towards triggers. She also brought her dogs to help with his reactivity. We still have a long way to go before my dog is completely neutral around other dogs but I have a better connection with my dog thanks to everyone!

Our trainer Chandra was so sweet with our dog. Gave me so many helpful tips. She was available to…read morecome around my busy schedule. Would recommend her

I came to Sonia because I needed her help with my puppy Joppe. I was trying all I could by myself…read moreto train her but it just wasn't helping. After the first class with Sonia my puppy was already so much better. I kept coming back and I have to say Sonia is a dog whisperer. My dog has completely changed and I can't thank her enough. I would give Sonia 10 starts if I could because this has changed by dogs life and I am forever grateful!

I left my cat with one of their caretakers for 4 nights. When we picked up the cat on Monday…read moreafternoon; he was very ill and had a gash on his chest. I reached out to the "company" and the "caretaker" and both don't wish to take responsibility. I now have a $680 vet bill. When we dropped off the cat we were told the caretaker has 2 cats. It ended up being 5 cats and 2 dogs. Do not take your animals here. They do not have any liability policy nor will take any responsibility for the animals. I will be filing a small claims case again the company. Find a more reputable bigger named company. This company is amateur and has no safety nets in place in the event your animal is injured while under their care.

I have never written a Yelp review before this. I can usually move past an unpleasant experience. I…read morehope this will be the only one I'm forced to write. Short version: my Pawsome caretaker lost my cat - not through a freak accident, but due to several very preventable factors. I was able to find it - but only after a day and a 1/2 of searching exhaustively, at my own expense, and (what I perceived to be) an infuriatingly defensive attitude from caretaker and company. I called Pawsome in October 2018 to request a boarding service for my cat, and was referred to a caretaker in Beverly Hills. Prior to this request, I had used Pawsome once before. After an introductory call with the caretaker, I dropped my cat off at her home for boarding on Wednesday, 10/30/2018. I had been told by the caretaker that there may be an overlap in boarding with ONE other animal, and that the animals would be kept separated / not mingling together. The caretaker did not initiate contact any day during my trip. I had to reach out each day to check in. She told me the cat would come out to eat, and then hide in the closet. Hmm. I returned to pick the cat up several days later, Saturday, 11/3/2018. When I arrived, there was a cat (not mine) and several dogs in the main living room. ...? The caretaker told me she has not seen the cat since "yesterday" (Friday 11/2), and that she felt the cat was hiding. MY cat is not in the apartment, after having searched the entire place. The caretaker showed me a hole in her window screen. She speculated the cat may have escaped that way, as she had noticed the other cat had slipped outside that way. I was already pretty unhappy upon arrival. Now I am horrified. Several friends and I searched the home and surrounding neighborhood, many times over. During this time, the caretaker continued to accept animals for boarding - and had five dogs and one cat in her 2BR apt at one point. This was by her own admission and observed by me, my search team, and her neighbors. I finally found the cat around midnight on Sunday, 11/4/2018. It was outside, behind the garage - behind the caretaker's residence. Yes - the caretaker reimbursed me the $120 I paid her to board the cat. However, I had to put this amount back into color fliers (with photos and identifying info, as to increase the chances of the cat being found), as well as fees for posting on lost pet sites. I also had to call out of my job on Sunday, 11/4/2018, so I could continue to search for my cat. While money was not the true issue at hand...having to take a financial hit, on top of rescuing my own cat, felt like insult on top of great injury. Contact was not initiated by the owner of Pawsome, while I was searching for the cat. I had to reach out to let her know what had happened, and that I was out looking for my cat - whereupon she revealed that the caretaker had contacted her already, she was aware of the situation. I have never interacted with this person face to face - only via phone. After the cat was found, I called the Pawsome main office to discuss what the outcome of this would be. At the very damn least, reimbursement for fliers? And what about this...pretty problematic boarding situation?! In what seemed to be an effort to just get me off the phone, the owner declared about the caretaker situation - verbatim - "that's not my problem." The recurring defense throughout was that Pawsome was just a referral service. So - does who you refer to not matter, then? This is the driest rendering of a truly terrible day and a half that I can put here. It has taken me a good amount of time to even document my experience, without it being entirely led by emotion. I am still stunned this even happened. I feel a responsibility to share my bad experience, and a cautionary tale about the "share economy" in general. Unfortunately, a lot of these well-intentioned small gig businesses run on good faith and a handshake - and as I found out, the consumer has the potential to get burned when these "worst case scenarios" rise. It is my opinion that the caretaker was not forthright about the amount of animals coming and going in her home on any given day. It is also my opinion - that I feel much more could have been done by the owner, especially around addressing concerns raised over the boarding conditions. If the caretaker was reprimanded, let go, or there was a genuine effort to prevent this situation from reoccurring again within Pawsome's referral service - it was not expressed to me. The boarding situation I walked into seemed to contradict everything that was advertised about this service. It's been hard to put into words how awful this all was. I can only hope this will urge folks out there to use every precaution when vetting a potential pet service.

Mary Lynn has a remarkable talent for training even the most unruly or impolite pets. With a…read moremaster's degree in Special Education and decades of teaching experience, her expertise truly shines through in her approach to dog training. Before working with Mary Lynn, walks with my dog Zoey were stressful, and outings felt overwhelming. Zoey used to pull on the leash, bark excessively, and react intensely to other dogs. Thanks to Mary Lynn's training, all of that has changed. Zoey now walks calmly, holds her commands until released, and is much more relaxed and focused in public settings. My top goals going into training were exactly those -- leash manners, less barking, and better control around distractions -- and Mary Lynn helped us achieve every one of them. I can now take Zoey to restaurants, dog parks, farmers markets, and more without feeling nervous. What's more, Mary Lynn doesn't just train your dog -- she teaches you how to maintain and build on that training at home. She has a true gift, and I'm so grateful for the confidence and joy she's brought to both me and Zoey.

MaryLynn is THE BEST dog trainer in Ventura County! She truly understands how to communicate with…read morethem and how to change their erratic behaviors.

K9 Kiri has been my Go-To pet sitter every time I travel and I have done my fair share of traveling…read morein the last 4 years. She takes care of our dogs, cat and birds! My animals all Love her! She walks my dogs twice a week as well as my Fathers dog three times a week. She will take my youngest dog on pack walks with other dogs too. K9 Kiri is a Life-Saver!!

I have used Jeanne many times to care for my cats and my dogs…read more Her attention to detail and tons of cuddle time with my babies are wonderful. When I get back there are always detailed notes on how my babies were. I will continue to call Jeanne whenever I need pet sitting.

We have used Jeanne twice to watch our 2 cats. The first time we used her went fairly well. One…read moreof our cats has a GI problem and can only digest a raw turkey diet so we left explicit directions on how to thaw and prepare his meals. As far as we could tell the visit went fine except the first thing we noticed when we walked in our door was a TERRIBLE rotten food odor. Jeannie had done what we instructed her to do except she did not properly clean out all the raw turkey from the bags of per-prepared raw food, so they sat in our kitchen garbage the entire time we were gone and well, you can imagine what happened after a few days of Santa Clarita summer heat. We forgave it as a chance accident because we really liked her and she seemed to interact very well with my two cats. That was summer of 2014. Now I move to the present. We called Jeanne again to watch the cats while we went on an international snowboarding trip for 5 days. It had been a long time since the last visit and some things had changed with the care of the boys so we arranged a quick drop in to really drive home the point of cleaning out the bags of raw turkey after each feeding before tossing them in the garbage as well as go over their changes in care. We left explicit notes on how to care for the cats, showed her how to use the litter genie, as well as notes with pictures of the cats and what they like, snacks, feedings etc. Pretty much spelled out their care. Anyway, the trip went well and we returned from our international flight ready to see the cats....not at all prepared to deal with the mess she left us to deal with after our flight. First things first the garage where the litter-genie is kept reaked of nasty cat mess....we smelled it as soon as the car door opened. We checked the box and it was clean. Inspecting the litter-genie we immediately noticed the initial chamber was packed full of wet, soggy, clumpy poo and pee. Whoever filled it up didn't bother to open the door to let the waste drop into the sealed bag below. We specifically had her come visit to show her how to use the litter-genie and it was not done correctly. AND instead of cleaning up the mess it was LEFT there, for 5 days, for me to clean up....AFTER coming into LAX on an international flight at 11PM. I was not happy but cleaned it up and moved into the house. Inside I found a note that explained the boys did well on the trip, didn't eat super well but did eat and seemed to be in good spirits. On the bottom of the note was a drawing of my bed with 2 big X's on it that marked places where my RAW TURKEY eating cat vomited on my bed. The note stated she and her assistant cleaned the mess. When I walked into my bedroom I knew right away the mess wasn't cleaned very well. The room smelled of rotten meat, and my comforter had two crusted over, crunchy, nasty looking stains on the end of the bed. The mess was certainly wiped off but it was far from "clean." I could tell someone half way tried to clean it because my Shout bottle was sitting on my countertop and it is normally with the laundry next to the cat box in the garage. The spots still smelled like rotten meat when I put my nose to them AND I found a THIRD spot at the head of the bed. It had been half way cleaned like the other two. This was the straw that broke the camels back, so to speak. So now I have to spend the next 2 hours cleaning my nasty bed linens that were allowed to have rotting meat vomit left on them after being half way cleaned by the sitter. On top of that I had to clean the litter-genie she left in my garage, and then on top of all of that she left a baggie on my front porch with all the waste from the 5 days we were gone that didn't make it into the litter-genie. Is it too much to ask for the person I paid over $200 dollars to watch my cats to put their waste in the garbage can outside? Would it have been too much for her to have tossed the comforter in my washing machine....where she grabbed the Shout to half way clean the rotten meat vomit? Even better she could have dropped the comforter off at a dry cleaner here in town and I would have gladly paid for the service and even tipped her a little for going out of her way! Is it too much to ask to follow directions when cleaning the cat box.....after all she did charge me an additional $15 dollars for the visit to show her how to use the dang thing. After cleaning up all the mess and washing my comforter and getting the rotten meat cat vomit smell out of my bedroom my spouse and I ended up getting in bed after our long flight at about 3AM. Not exactly what you expect after paying as much as we did for her services. The next day I informed her that was our last visit with her and told her why. She was very defensive and today I received an even more defense letter from her. In the end, if you want a sitter who thinks past their CONTRACT - use someone else!!!!

We have 2 boxers that have been together for a year and suddenly got into a fight. After that they…read morecouldn't be in the same space without charging each other. Heather came to meet with us ASAP and gave us hope, as we were worried we would have to get rid of one. She worked with us and the dogs to give us strategies to slowly bring them back together. We worked for about 3 months following all of her guidance and support. Now they are friends again!!! We can't believe it and Can't thank her enough. She is so patient and knowledgeable with the pups. She gave us great strategies to use. We are still continuing to work with the boys to continue to strengthen their bond to ensure nothing ever happens in the future. Thanks Heather!! You saved us!

For over 20 years Heather has helped us with 7 of our family dogs. Her natural ability to…read morecommunicate with dogs from the moment she meets them is amazing to watch; they really are communicating with each other. Our dogs, mostly German shepherds but also a Belgian Malenois and a Shepherd Husky mix with varying dispositions; she mastered them all. When you see her in action, you'll immediately witness her command of them as well as their understanding of her. Her focused discipline is second only to her ability to lead them in a gentle and loving way. Results soon follow. Heathers wealth of knowledge and experience and in her field has benefited our family, our pets and the relationships therein for over two decades so for our family, there is no one else to call.