I met Kristina while walking my Oggie Doggie around the lake. She was hanging out by the boat…read morerental with the Ladies of the Lake just before they were about to get their row on. I used to row the lake with the boat club so I already had a soft spot for that aspect but I actually appreciated her asking about my dog and giving me her card for future reference. I had only adopted by a dog in January from Rocket Dog and had as-of-yet, not left him with anyone day or night. He had been loyally by my side for many months in my disability and unemployment. My family does an annual trip to Reno in July so as the date approached, I tore up my house looking for the card she gave me. Once I located it, I both text her and called her. She had just had a tooth pulled so she wasn't feeling 100%, the date I needed boarding was over a month away so I said let's touch base when she was feeling better. A couple of weeks go by and as I was thinking to myself, I should call, text, or email her again. No sooner had I had that thought, had I opened up my email to find correspondence from her saying just that! I have read a couple of negative reviews on here about her personality. I like to do that when I am getting to know a business to see what others have had issues with. Even after reading those, I still stand confident that for my older dog, who is half-blind due to coming out of a hoarding situation, she is a good fit for us. We initially did a meet and greet for about an hour with the dog, my 10-year-old daughter, and myself in her backyard to see how Oggie did with her other dogs, both resident dogs, and boarded dogs. He did great and neither Oggie nor my daughter wanted to leave. The next step was a day boarding so he could rest assured that his new adoptive mommy, me, was not passing him off permanently but temporarily and I would return after 8 hours and take him home. The final step in our Reno trip coming up on Saturday for a few days will be to take Oggie there the night before we leave and pick him up the morning after we return home. I am confident that Oggie and Kristina will do well together. If not, I will update this review to reflect such... To be continued...

We had a _terrible_ experience with Kristina, and I would advise anyone considering working with…read moreher to read this review in full first. She made several decisions that made us deeply uncomfortable, both in terms of how she related to our dog, other dogs and how she treated her financial agreements with us (i.e. not honoring her word and charging us for services not received). Shortly after moving to Oakland, we had to go away on short notice and had to establish a new boarding relationship. We contacted Kristina about a week before leaving. We agreed to one day of doggie daycare that we did not otherwise need to determine if this was a good fit. This was explicitly a "test". She required us to put down a deposit to hold the boarding spot. When I dropped my dog off, she began making derogatory comments about a very elderly dog she was boarding in a confiding way, as though it would be obvious to me that the dog was a problem (it wasn't). She said the dog was very old and needed to be put down, that the owners hadn't been up front with her about the dog's problems. I was amazed she would tell a new client that another client's dog should be put down. Mystified, I asked what the dog's problems were. She said that the dog was sometimes disoriented and bumped into walls, that it sometimes vocalized and cried for its owners (as it was doing then ) and it made her feel terrible to hear this. She said she would not work with this dog again. To me, nothing about the dog's behavior seemed problematic or out of the ordinary for an elderly dog while boarding and it was only stressful to me to hear a prospective dog boarding business owner talking about dogs this way. She also said she was possibly going camping for 2 of the 4 days we would be boarding our dog, but her roommate would be around to watch the dogs. This was also alarming, but we felt we had no time to find another arrangement, so we agreed. When we picked up our dog at the end of the day, we learned that our dog had been cowering under the furniture most of the day. We'd never seen our dog behave this way, though he has boarded with half a dozen other people. He usually sits in guests' laps the whole time they are visiting. We were alarmed, but Kristina asked us to bring our dog back a second day because she'd been out of the house much of the day and hadn't been available to make our dog comfortable. She could not remember our dog's name and referred to him as a "she" (he is male). We were reluctant not only because of the red flags already described, but because we did not need daycare, only boarding, and each additional "test" day of daycare was costly. It was concerning that we'd paid for a test day when Kristina was mostly out of the house. We felt she could have planned better. We were supposed to bring our dog at 7AM the second day. We ran late. Kristina called us at 7:01 or 7:02 AM and asked where we were and told us she needed us to arrive at the time scheduled. It was stressful for us that there was so little wiggle room. Kristina indicated that she was going to a doctor's appointment that morning and needed to leave promptly at 7AM. Yet the only point of this second unneeded day of daycare was to see if our dog would be more comfortable with her if she was home, instead of out of the house. Our dog was returning again to a frightening environment with nobody there to calm him. After drop off, my partner and I realized we were uncomfortable leaving our dog with Kristina. I contacted her and said I preferred not to go forward with the boarding arrangement based on the test daycare experience and would she be willing to refund for boarding. She texted, "of course." That afternoon, 8 hours later, with no further communication to the contrary, my partner picked up our dog. Kristina refused the refund because she said we hadn't given sufficient notice, even though our whole relationship had happened within such short notice that we could not possibly have given more notice, and even though she'd agreed to a refund based on the test days. She said her policy was to keep all the money, but that she would make an exception and give us a credit for daycare. We didn't trust her anymore, and so my partner argued for an hour before she agreed to refund 50%. She agreed only after my partner asked for a written policy, which stated she would keep 50%, not 100%, as she had been verbally claiming. Seeing the discrepancy, she said she's not much of a businessperson and can't keep track of her own policy. In the end, we paid Kristina ~$200 for 2 days of test daycare to determine that this was a person we did not trust with our dog. We happily made the 8-hour round-trip drive _twice_, on work nights, to drop off and pick up our dog from a family member rather than going forward with the boarding arrangement.

TLDR Beverly's reactive dog training services didn't turn out like I thought they would. She said…read moreit'd be personalized, but this was the most cookie-cutter training I could've gotten. Most of the training is self-driven based on old articles and videos you can find on her website that she compiles into emails and tells you to perfect before meeting again. Yelp reviews seemed more aligned with my experience than Google fyi. ----- Even though Beverly was on TV before, she wasn't friendly like you'd expect from a "celebrity" trainer. I thought maybe her experience made up for it. But what she said her training would be like and what it was like were totally different. The biggest difference between my expectations and reality was that she effectively refuses to meet unless your dog has 100% perfected the homework from the previous lesson (which she doesn't really practice with you). This condition was never mentioned in the contract or in the consultation. Further, to get a repeat training of the first lesson, it took us 6 months of negotiating and literally hundreds of hours of self-driven training (I even sent her proof of our efforts and she didn't care). Another important thing to note for anyone else with reactive dogs is that Beverly did not ever see what our dog was like in the "real world". Our one and only in-person training was in her garage, so she only saw our dog "calm". She also never demonstrated how to do things correctly in-person and all of her feedback on our technique came from her watching very short videos we sent her. In-person session was mainly theory (see Yelp reviews for others calling this out). There was at most 10 minutes of practical training in the first lesson and none of it was related to addressing problems like reactivity that might make the homework tricky. So, there was never a good feedback loop to help us succeed. This was a major problem when we tried to do her homework. We literally spent 6 MONTHS trying to complete the part of the FIRST homework that required our reactive dog to lay down calmly in public spaces in less than 30s (this time requirement was emphasized on several calls, not an exaggeration). Over those 6 months, we had 2 feedback sessions virtually, but she continued to threaten to "fire us" if we tried to book an in-person session. In that time, she never proactively reached out to check in, even as months went by and she knew we were struggling. After 7 months, when I asked for more structured help (for a 3rd time) or my money back, she acted like I was asking for magic (her words). In the end, I was done with it. Beverly was not helpful and it felt like anytime we wanted her help it was inconvenient for her. The only two positive things I will giver her were: 1.) She was quick and responsive; however her replies were often rude, unfiltered and lacking the nuance we needed. If her communication was better, maybe her virtual-forward style could work, but that would require a lot of work on her end. And 2.) She invited us to a free group training session so we could get in-person help, but we were getting married that weekend, so we couldn't attend. She said she'd have more of those events, but she never told us about others. Next, Beverly's refund rules were crazy --she charged $395 fee for texts and emails, $395 fee for what was effectively a sales call and another $100 fee for re-reading our messages to calculate the refund among other fees. We completed less than 20% of the package we bought, but were charged over 50%. Thankfully, her prices were so high that the refund was enough to still get a trainer who is willing to meet with us regularly, as we requested from her. Speaking of which, before you sign the contract, ask her why she has a clause in it preventing people from posting bad reviews...most people wouldn't need that...

After seeing Beverly's reply. I do want to say that at the time of service, I was not unhappy with…read morethe training Beverly provided. I was also naive and didn't know what to expect from a dog training session as it was our first time hiring a private trainer. She was indeed very responsive both by email and by text and was gracious enough to help my fiance reschedule our lesson so he can propose to me. With that said, this is a hindsight review after having trained with other trainers. The first is the high rate Beverly charged. Looking back we paid over $3k for 6 sessions with 2 dogs. This is not six sessions per dog, this is a combined six ONE HOUR sessions with both dogs present. Which means if she had focused on each dog equally, we paid about $1500 for 3 hours of lessons with her for each dog (that's a rate of $500/hour). Compare that to other trainers who offer five sessions for $750 for each dog. We didn't think that her lessons were way better or more valuable at $500/hour than compared to other trainers at $150/hour. It is true that Beverly did instruct us to practice with our dog around dog parks, but this didn't quite translate over to walks itself. Maybe we didn't follow her methodology closely enough, but at the end of the day, another trainer was able to teach us successfully. I'm sure Beverly's methods work for many dogs and many owners, but it did not work out for us. It certainly wasn't worth the $3k we spent for roughly 6 hours of private instruction and a couple group sessions. Our current trainer is also very responsive and supportive via email/text/calls. He is also great about rescheduling. He has also met us at a park twice to show us how to manage our dog's reactivity in a real life scenarios. These are all baseline expectations I have for hiring a dog trainer now. We were not getting premier service at the $500/hour rate. Beverly didn't go out of her way to check in with us in between our sessions or after our sessions have ended nor did she extend support in any way after. Again, we were not unhappy at the time of service because it was our first time hiring a private trainer. It was only after we worked with other trainers that we realized we didn't get our money's worth in training with Beverly. Thank you Beverly for everything you have done for us, but I can't, in good conscience, recommend you to other struggling dog owners, many of whom may only be able to afford hiring a trainer once. I am also sorry that this review came at such an inopportune time.

Jess is so so sweet and patient, and is a wonderful teacher for both dogs & humans! She's extremely…read moreknowledgeable and has had some really helpful and creative ideas for navigating confusing behaviors/challenges that my senior rescue dog has been struggling with. She really knows how to break down training steps in an approachable, non-overwhelming way. We have only had a few sessions with her so far, but her warmth and support have really helped us both already! :) I have some health challenges, and Jess has been incredibly accommodating and understanding about my different needs. Highly recommend!! :))

Jess is a patient, insightful, and thoughtful trainer. She helped us understand and work through…read moresome of our older toy poodle's quirky and problematic behaviors (attacking certain people's feet, barking at the tv, hiding whenever it was time to go for a walk, etc). We felt very stuck and unsure of how to navigate these behaviors prior to meeting with her. We worried that our dog being older would make change impossible, but that definitely isn't the case. I particularly appreciated how collaborative she was with us throughout the process-- she made sure to check-in with us each week about how we felt regarding her suggestions, how things were going when we were practicing training on our own, what interventions we were comfortable with or not, what behaviors we wanted to prioritize working on next, etc. Jess is also in general just a lovely and kind human who clearly has such a strong passion for the work she does. This made it really easy for us to trust that we were being guided by someone wise and with the best of intentions. Highly recommend.

Petra Reynolds has dog sat and trained our 12 year old chihuahua, Mole' since she was a pup. Over…read morethe years her work has turned our dog from a shy, timid dog into a confident, friendly, responsive dog. When we go on vacation, Petra takes Mole' into her home and treats as if she were her dog. For dog training, dog sitting and dog walking, there is noone better! Helane Zeiger

I had low expectations of success with our 8 year old chihuahua mix, Biscuit, but we were kind of…read moreat our wits end with his barking, guarding, and general reactivity! he had also recently destroyed our blinds and two screen doors... Birgit helped us and Biscuit SO MUCH! I can't believe the improvement in Biscuit's barking and reactivity after a month and a half. we used to feel frustrated with his barking multiple times a week if not daily, that is down to about once a week!! Birgit taught us very realistic methods and practiced with us, at our home and the dog park. she is extremely knowledgeable. she is organized, has great communication, and is very reliable. she followed up our sessions with written materials that really helped me remember the details of what we had worked on. I would recommend her to absolutely anyone. on a personal note, I wish for myself and Biscuit that I had done dog training sooner. I know we are both a lot happier now. it's so worth it!!! the effort and the money!

We highly recommend Birgit Hafermann for any dog-related services. Birgit has supported the care…read moreand training of our three dogs for many years: Callie, Tipper and Georgie. It never fails that our dogs become more responsive and better behaved after her care sessions with them. At the end of two of our dog's lives, she reached out to us in a very touching way that my husband and I appreciated greatly. She is still, of course, part of our Callie's support team.

Hands down, Christi is the best dog walker in the East Bay. She is a first a dog lover, who is…read moreconscientious, organized, and thoughtful. Her pack walks exhaust the dogs while being safe and exciting for them. Her dog sitting sets my mind at ease as she knows dogs, her level head and knowledge ensure peace of mind while we are away.

this is also a long overdue review, I have used BARK AROUND THE BLOCK for many years. and…read more her staff are excellent. my dog; Rommel, a French bulldog he absolutely loves walking with her. She socializes the dogs with the group walks offered in the afternoons or morning walk. during the ongoing months The scheduling and communication is excellent ! My dog has improved greatly in all aspects of his socialization as well as his obedienc. Believe it or not for his breed he is so chill now. He loves his group walks! The trails are varied which is fabulous and keeps it interesting for the dogs. I have been extremely pleased with the excellent level of service provided by Bark Around the Block She is deserving of the Best Dog Walker of Alameda for the consecutive years, it has been awarded to her Company!

Jonathan has been a fantastic dog walker for our young Labrador Retriever Ollie! Ollie started…read morewalking with Jonathan when he was still a puppy and gets super excited for his walks. Jonathan does a good job of providing updates on the walks and is very reliable. Ollie can be quite a handful given his high energy and size but Jonathan does a good job of managing him. Jonathan is friendly and great to work with. He is very responsive and has helped us out a few times by giving Ollie an extra walk in the evenings when we couldn't make it home in time. Overall, trustworthy and great walker. Ollie loves spending time with Jonathan!

Jonathan has been a wonderful dog walker for our pup, Morty (a Boston Terrier) for the last 1.5…read moreyears. He is reliable, responsible and Morty absolutely loves him. Morty runs on the high energy side and Jonathan was able to provide very stimulating and active walks for him, ensuring that he returned home happy and tired. We recently moved out of the Bay Area and sadly had to say goodbye to Jonathan, but I could not recommend him enough as a dog walker and overall lovely person!

Heather has worked wonders with our challenging, high-energy Malinois. We did a 6 week board and…read moretrain stay and follow up training. We interviewed a few trainers in the area and really liked her best because (1) she has a lot of experience working with high-drive dogs (and has her own Malinois to help socialize our pup) (2) the dogs stay in her home with her, and not at a facility and (3) she doesn't have a large staff, so you get really personalized care and attention. She's really communicative; it was really nice to have regular video and text updates of our dog's progress, and to see the behavior change in realtime. Dog trainer is a lot about training the owner too, and she's a really good hands-on teacher. I feel so much more confident as a dog-owner after working with her. The results have been amazing; when we first adopted our dog, she was literally jumping off balconies to chase squirrels; now she can walk normally on leash, come to work all day, and hang out quietly at a restaurant while we have dinner.  I can't recommend Heather enough.