Training With A Heart

I had a really positive experience with a phone consult with Alana, and am actually surprised to see any negative reviews for her here.
I have a cat who had issues using her litter box. Alana gave me some insight as to why it might be happening and some suggestions as to what to change. I took most of her suggestions and within days our cat had rerouted her bathroom activities back to the litter box (and not the couch!).
Alana sent me an email a couple of weeks later, following up on our progress, which I really appreciated. In my experience, she has only been generous with her time, and spot on in her guidance. Not sure we would still have a couch OR a cat if it werent for her.

I had looked up this person based on some of the very positive reviews on Unilocal as we trust people’s opinions. Unfortunately this was not the case with our experience with Alana. I apologize for not posting prior but the whole incident was painful and I didn’t want to dredge up bad experiences. But, looking back and at current reviews, they all seem as people joined Unilocal once just to review her and aren’t real helpers which makes me less confident that Unilocal screens made up accounts. But regardless. Our Chico was not helped by our consultation nor any of the suggestions Alana had a while back. We tried her vague recommendations for crating and ignoring his behavior and giving his treats when we left which the veterinary told us on a visit was the worst thing you can do as it rewards leaving which made sense. I am questionable about her ability to train or treat dogs and I subsequently have tried to contact the positive review helpers to no avail which makes me think they aren’t real reviews. This makes me sad for the whole Unilocal system but I hope something will get fixed so people like this cant inflate themselves.

Sitting down with this woman for two hours was my biggest challenge, This woman screams insanity and has no professional education when it comes to animal behavior. If you want a good two hours of a woman in your living room who has no clue or education how animals behave, spend two hundred bucks on this. she wants to be caesar but after five minutes you will realize she cares little about you, your pet, or helping you. She won’t even make eye contact when you engage her and three times she tried to solicite her book during the paid session. She threw bread at my dog on the floor like he was a pigeon, did not once ask any questions about him and solicited her book at least three times. We already paid her! She has no functional knowledge of basic animal dominance and teaches rewarding non behavior than promoting or punishing other behaviors which would do nothing to cure any problem except make for more paid sessions with her. She was not helpful and will just try to sell you her twelve dollar book. Oh and by the way, she owns cats, not dogs so that should tell you her comfort level with canines.

Tried Alana to help with my dog’s separation anxiety. She assured me she would show and teach me different methods to breaking the anxiety than what I could read online, but this was false. The majority of what she told me I had already read online so I was quite disappointed. I also didn’t like the fact one of her solutions was to hide/​leave enough cheese to keep my dog occupied for 10 minutes. Any person who is around dogs would agree that 10 minutes of eating cheese can NOT be healthy for them. I’m trying to fix my dog, not give him clogged arteries and a heart attack. Regardless, she got to my appointment late and did not stay the amount of time she was supposed to. I also don’t think she really cared how our dog did after our meeting as she never followed up or asked how things were going. The only time she contacted me was to yell at me at 8am about how some payment didn’t go through, which she accused me of doing on purpose (which is 100% not the case — why would I pay her and purposely not have it go through?). She did end up kind of apologizing for her behavior via email, however the whole thing was extremely unprofessional and unnecessary. There is no part of me that would recommend her to anyone.

Alana is FANTASTIC with animals, and can solve ANY behavioral issue, I am sure!!! She helped me resolve a MAJOR behavioral issue with my two cats, that started fighting viciously after 9 years together, because of a single event. Everything I read about this (redirected aggression) on other websites suggested that the problem might never be fixable, and one cat might need to be re-​homed. I had a two hour consultation with Alana, and 48 hours later my cats were best buddies again, as I followed her technique. I can’t recommend her enough!!!
By the way, her website is
, for some reason it’s not posted here.