We had our first night of official training with my local KC obedience club last night. I'm...not sure how I feel about it. I have no experience other than what I've read on here, so let me know if this is in line with obedience clubs in general. It felt messy. We are in the puppy class, which is for pups aged 13-26 weeks. We were supposed to be 11 but were only 8 on the night. Lots of waiting around (perfect time to c/t for calm at least). It was a 45 min session and we only did 4 things - instructor wanted to see how we got our dogs to focus on us; having the dogs take treats from our hands once they were calm and had given up trying to snuffle them out; collar touch; one recall with the instructor holding the pup and us calling them from a distance. It felt like the recall was just setting people up to fail - they were calling their pups while the pups were still busy sniffing the super interesting instructor. Xena was excitable (I was expecting the jumping beans dog) but she settled really well once we got a few metres distance between each dog. As soon as we were called together though... Leaving the club though...yikes. The puppy group is in a separate room, so you open the roller door and you're running the dog gauntlet. Dogs waiting for the next classes, dogs leaving the other classes, dogs jumping and pulling and barking everywhere. Once I had Xena's attention I resorted to luring her out with her treats. It was madness. I'm therefore thinking of doing some classes with a private training school in the city (40 minutes drive) - but the class is kept small and they're +R. I've already paid for the obedience club so I'll stick out the term, and I figure it can't hurt to train around distractions? Maybe my experience is par for the course with many clubs - would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
Our first KC class is tomorrow night. I previously chatted with the trainer a few weeks ago to book up, but she also gave me some immediate advice about how to manage a particular behaviour. She was very helpful. I'm hoping that Ted (and we) will benefit from being trained with other dogs/owners. Watch this space, because Ted is going through what I can only call early-onset adolescence. I'll post elsewhere about that though...
@Xena Dog Princess well, I've never done a puppy class, but I don't think I'd like what you describe. Was there only one instructor for an anticipated 11 pups? Maybe they knew they'd only have 8, which is a much better number. I agree with your assessment of the recall, sounds like they set the pups up to fail. I'd have preferred they launch into teaching recall, not letting puppies learn it's optional. And the gauntlet sounds awful. We had a gauntlet to run in one of our classes but the dogs in class and leaving or waiting were at least six months old. Not baby puppies who might be terrified or hurt. I do like a group class, just maybe not that one.
@Deejay50 let me know how your class was - really interested to hear about other set ups! @Snowshoe yeah, not really ideal :/ I had hoped that an obedience club would be good because I'd like to get into rally-o or the competitive obedience side of things. You'd hope that a club would know what they're doing!
11 in the class sounds like a lot , but maybe that's normal where you are . Our puppy class had max 6 dog limit , which was good as trainer had time to talk to us individually as well as being able to talk to the whole group . Now we have moved up to the good citizen class there is still a max limit of 6 dogs . When finishing our class , the following class wait outside , until we have all left , so there's not a big mad scrum of dogs to battle through .
There was confusion about the start date for our group, so there were a lot of puppies there from the previous group which should have finished last week. Next week should be better with only four puppies. Ted was overwhelmed with excitement and barked a great deal, biting my hand to try to get off the lead and have fun. He managed a good sit, down and stand with both the trainer and me, and was surprisingly responsive to the distract from meeting another dog exercise. Watching the soon to be graduates from the previous class, the training seems to be of a good quality, with lots of obedient dogs. Classes were led by an enthusiastic and patient young trainer. Ted's only real social gaffe was to try to hump a shy labradoodle. Looking forward to carrying on with the classes.
We tried three dog schools till we found the one that worked for us (the third one). The third one was very quiet and peaceful, no more than 6 dogs on the field. Dogs coming to class afterwards had to wait well away, and if they so much as distracted the class, they had to clear right away or wait in their car. It was about 4x more expensive though! Our first school was in a huge park that was very popular for dogs. The recall was a disaster -- absolutely no setup for success; Snowie would simply run off to play with dogs not in our class. The second school had about 6 classes going on at once on a huge field with instructors shouting and balls flying -- way too distracting for Snowie. I was told I had to train Snowie to behave in a distracting environment. It was impossible with such a young, sociable pup. At the third school I learned what proper training was all about, how Snowie should behave under ideal circumstances. At the two previous schools I couldn't get close to ideal behaviour and so never knew what I was aiming for. Judging from others that I meet in the local park, 1 on 1 training seems the best -- you get the most bang for your buck because the instructor is concentrating only on you, not on several other handlers and dogs. If you change schools, can you first go without your dog to assess if it's the school for you? That way you won't pay the fees and then discover it wasn't for you.
