Avoid this company at all costs - Dog Trainer Suburban K9 Employee Review

1.0
23 Mar 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get to work with dogs.

Cons

This company is very shady. Do not believe anything that they say. Do not sign their two year non-compete as they love to threaten lawyers and remind you of it throughout your entire employment with them since the owner “went to law school.” They will state that they supply you with everything for the job you need. This is not true at all and you will see them responding to reviews on here claiming the reviewer is wrong. Let me tell you this, YOU will have to pay a significant amount for things you will never be reimbursed for including: paper towels for cleaning up accidents (they supply you with 5 small, reusable, cheap cloths that you are expected to spend your money on to wash in your washing machine), any training tools that you will not sell to a client (think a long line that is necessary for you to train dogs in a park setting, you will be expected to sell that or you eat the cost). The list goes on and on including times where a puppy won’t eat, they expect you to make chicken and rice for the dog, but guess who pays for the chicken and rice, YOU do. Finally, they love to tell you to take hours you worked off of your schedule. I know several employees including myself that have had this happen. Unfortunately, they know to never put it in writing and thus never get in legal trouble over this. I regret not being more diligent in tracking this as it is highly unethical and illegal what they are doing to their employees. There are so many bad things that I could go on and on about, but I will leave you here with some advice that you can visibly seek out to prove to yourself how dishonest and immoral this company is. Go take a look at their website and you will find that about 30% of the territories they claim to serve no longer exist. They claim they “are too busy to accept new clients” on these pages or simply just don’t have a trainer listed. This means they have no trainers working there at all. This business and their owners/management team have no moral ground and will not treat you like a part of their family like they claim in their interview process, but rather treat you as a way for you to work to pay their bills and support their families. This is a service based company having 1/3 of their employees on the administrative side rather than actually working as dog trainers (this company has too much fat and is very top heavy for the industry). Their business model is to pay you as little as possible and have you pay most of the job related expenses, while having the highest training prices in every territory they are in. To further explain this, their typical one hour house call lesson is $195. Assuming it takes you 45 minutes to drive each way, that is 2.5 hours of pay at $25/hr. You do the math and tell me where that extra approximately $130 is going since they don’t pay for gas, car, etc. Long story short: AVOID SK9 AT ALL COSTS

Explore other reviews about Suburban K9

5.0
5 Sept 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Make that, I really like my job!!! I get to work with dogs everyday and really, what could be better than that. The company does a really good job with training and continuing education which is something that is super important to me. There are webinars taught by different trainers and experts to help further our education. We also have a ton of good trainers in the company and everyone learns from each other. There is always something new being introduced and I feel like I'm always learning something.

Cons

I don't have anything to complain about!

5.0
24 Feb 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I don't feel like a lot of the reviews on here match my experience of working with Suburban K9. In my time working for the company, I got the feeling that they truely care about their employees and helping people with their dogs. There aren't many jobs in the pet care industry where you can get full benefits and that was something that I really appreciate. I liked the amount of time and effort that was put into training me to be a dog trainer up front. I do wish that there was more continuing education and chance for advancement within the company.

Cons

There are certainly draw backs of working here. A lot of them are the drawbacks of being a dog trainer. It can be hard work and demand a lot of your time. There is a lot of driving assoicated with the job as the service area is massive. Once you are an established trainer you are somewhat working on your own. There is support from your manager when you need it, but I need to work somewhere that I can see co-workers in person daily.

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