Business ProfileforVacay 9 Dog Training Academy

Our new puppy ***, was going in for a 3-week board and train in preparation to be a service animal for physical disabilities. We had never done work with a dog trainer before, so we searched ****** for trainers near us and found Brian at Vacay9. As seen in the screenshot from the Vacay9 website, we decided to go with the 3-week board and train because we liked that Brian advertised a "well-behaved dog at pickup." After the initial meetup with Brian, we expressed our want for *** to be trained as a service animal and asked if he had experience, to which he said "Yes we have done plenty of service training." Going into it we had no red flags because we had no reason not to believe he could provide the services he was offering, as first-time dog training clients. In that same meetup, we voiced our concerns about how young Sam was, and if we should wait on it. He was very forward on "this being the best time to train him" (despite him being 8 weeks old at the time and not knowing anything about the world yet). Quickly into the boarding, we got those red flags, as every time we visited *** nobody was in the building (in the middle of the weekdays) which happened on multiple occurrences. On the checkup meetings, we had expressed a couple of times that we did not need to teach Sam silly tricks like "bang" or "under arrest" but we needed the helpful ones like "stay" and "come." He never ended up learning those from Brain. We noticed after we picked him up he was nowhere near a "well-trained dog at pickup." We understand every dog is different, though. We decided to confront Brian, as concerned clients. We had purchased his services and expected an outcome. When we told him this outcome was not what we were told would happen due to his "skill level with 3 thousand hours in training" He got very offended and was making claims that we just came in to attack him and demand a refund. When in reality we were 100% calm going into it wanting to have an adult conversation about our outcome. Attached is a picture of the statement of $2,850 (the only confirmation of payment) and nowhere did it state his refund policy. In my opinion, if you are the owner of a business you need to act like it and not show such unprofessionalism to someone who is offering you a client. We asked him about even just a partial refund since he did board Sam for those 3 weeks, and he shut the idea down right away. We left the conversation unsettled and upset that we had almost $3,000 stolen from us that we would have needed to use for another trainer to help Sam become a service dog ASAP which we thought was going to happen. In the end, I understand every dog trains on different timelines. What I am not settling for is the unprofessionalism we were met with when going in to have an adult conversation about the services we paid for. We were willing to work with him on the refund amount. We expressed to him this was a big investment and we did not get the outcome he was promising, so we needed to come to some understanding. When he met us with such defensiveness, we realized we were out of options and had to explore other routes to try to get this money back to put towards another training service that could actually explain and show proof of service dog training they have done, and real proof to back that up instead of blindly believing someone. We will not be making that mistake again after this interaction with Brain and the Vacay9 services. If you have anymore questions regarding the situation, please reach out and we'd be happy to answer anything to get this resolved. Thank you for your time.