Jim Burwell’s Petiquette

Very expensive for what you get. His customer service, his wife, is horrible. After paying him for private lessons that failed, I went to Rover Oaks and was much more satisfied. I would recommend anyone but him

Petiquette has the worst customer service policy of any business I have ever dealt with. I’m not one to write a negative review, but as a loving dog owner, this situation needs to be put out there as a fair warning to all Houston dog owners looking for dog lessons.
I called Petiquette as a returning customer. I used them for puppy lessons initially and wanted to have personal training classes for my dog. First things first… do not use this business if you are working and have a very busy schedule. They are not flexible AT ALL with rescheduling. You can reschedule your lessons once, and after that they keep your money. Plain and simple, they keep all of it. No questions asked.
First sign of this being the wrong people to work with — you have to pay in full up front before any of the lessons take place. Uh-​oh. Not a deposit for one lesson, but the whole charge up front of $ 555. This is not a small amount for three dog training lessons. Really, what makes this business so special where that sort of policy is allowed? The only other thing I can think of that you have to pay in full would be an airplane ticket, and if you have to unfortunately change your ticket, at least you can still get the service out of it even if you have to pay a change fee. Anyways, back to our story…
I had to reschedule my lessons once because of my job. Then I found out a week ahead of time of the rescheduled first lesson that I would be out of the country for work unexpectedly. I asked if they could make an exception to reschedule my lessons for a second time. My fiancé and I really wanted be able to work with Jim and our dog together, but his assistant (Leila) would not make any sort of exception. After several emails and finding out just how inflexible they were, I told them that even though I couldn’t make the first lesson, my fiancé would do it so we wouldn’t lose our money. We preferred to do it together to get the most out of the $ 185-​a-​pop lessons, but at minimum due to their inflexible rescheduling policy, we’d agree to just one of us there in attendance. Jim then emailed me back and said that they had canceled all of my lessons and that my dates/​times were no longer on their books! My fiancé called Jim directly to try and reason with him and that we were not wanting to cancel all three lessons. Jim’s response was that he was sorry, but you are no longer on the books and someone else has filled your time. This was only an hour after he had emailed to say he removed us from the books. There is no way he could have filled in our appointment slots in that time. In addition, I checked their Facebook page that day, and the Petiquette status was «Spring break has started here — it’s gonna be a quiet week. Time to catch up on cleaning up my office!»… Are you serious!!! You just got finished telling me how busy your schedule was for this week and how you couldn’t accommodate me, but your social media account tells me the exact opposite? Great… Jim Burwell is a liar, too.
Jim Burwell was downright mean about this situation. Yes, we did not follow the policy to the word, but we were just asking them to work with us. My work schedule is not something I have control over. Even though we wanted to keep the other two lessons; they wouldn’t allow it.
Have a last-​minute work conflict come up? Too bad.
Family emergency? Think again.
Too sick to get out of bed? Nice try.
To Jim Burwell’s rescheduling policy, if you cannot accurately predict your schedule two months in advance, you’re screwed. Jim takes your $ 555 and runs, laughing all the way to the bank.
Our money was practically stolen from us. Buyer beware of Leila and Jim Burwell’s Petiquette. Find another dog trainer.

My brother took his dog to Jim’s for training, I observed 4 out of 5 classes. I trained my older dog with another instructor in Michigan and thought it would be similar, but it wasn’t. Overall, I think Jim really does love dogs and knows a lot. But he’s probably better in one on one lessons; his group lesson was bit of a downer. Each lesson went quite slowly, learning just a few things in an hour. He spends the rest of the time demonstrating with one dog, and the rest of us don’t get much of a chance to practice the trick and ask him questions specific to our dog…
His lessons have around 8 – 9 dogs, while most other training facilities don’t take more than 6 at once. This means he couldn’t address most unique questions and was able to demonstrate a solution to just one or two issues, and if that issue didn’t apply to your dog, you spent 20 min of a 1 hour lesson watching him demonstrate an irrelevant topic. I wish he spent more time elaborating on the general behavioral concepts, how to teach the dog a trick, why you do it that way, what the dog is thinking and what not to do when teaching this trick.
The one good thing is during sessions 2 onward my brother’s dog was allowed to come early and play with the other dogs beforehand. It certainly gets their energy out and allows the dogs to focus better. I didn’t have that chance in Michigan so my dog was always too excited to focus. The facility is clean, quiet and his other clients seems like a bunch of decent folks. I’d recommend Jim as a trainer, but perhaps not his group lessons…