Details about our Group Training
Our Basic Obedience training group class is made up of eight (8) sessions that we run on Sunday afternoons here in Georgetown, Ontario.
We start our first lesson with a bit of an explanation to dog psychology, our method of training, and a controlled introduction of the dogs to each other – it’s a bit of a “sniff, sniff, hooray!” where the dogs pass by and learn each other’s scent. This introduction generally allows the remainder of the lessons to go more smoothly as the dogs should then know each other’s scent and be more familiar with one another.
The 2nd through 7th lesson is split into two halves, the first half is social time for the dogs to play and interact with each other and socialize in a controlled environment while we play sounds in the background (like thunderstorms, vacuum cleaners, police and ambulance sirens, etc.) to help them to become acclimated to them and to help understand that these are not scary sounds and associate the sounds with fun memories. We follow this up with a quick (5 minute) bathroom break for the dogs to go outside, pee or poop, and get into a mindset for the second half of the class.
The second half of the class is where we do our structured lesson that you and your dog will be working through with handouts and homework that you’ll take with you to put into practical use over the course of the week until the next lesson.
The 8th lesson is what we call our “Retrospect Day”, where we put you and your dog through a kind of obstacle course where we run you through everything that we’ve worked on with you and your dog through the prior classes.
Each lesson is 1 hour long, and we teach one lesson per week, so the group class is 8 weeks long. We do not run classes on statutory holidays – those holidays are family time, and we’re very big on family time, so we will have a week off for any weekend that there is a stat holiday on the Friday or Monday.
Classes are typically scheduled to run between September and late May / early June.
Each dog in our classes is required to have their own handler, and we do require that all dogs in attendance have their vaccinations up-to-date for at least Rabies and Bordetella (Kennel Cough).
Where it comes to handlers we allow and encourage up to 3 people from each household to come and be at the lessons and learn what they can, that way everyone is learning the same lessons and can apply them consistently, and consistency is something that dogs need.
In terms of class size, we accept no more than 5-6 dogs in our group classes. We have at least 2 of our own staff present to help with the structured lesson part of the class working with everyone to make sure that you understand the lesson and how to implement it.
We provide training materials in the form of booklets that you take home with you and keep at the end of the class with all of the things we’re working with you on (course materials are now available online through our Google Classroom site), and we send you home with homework at the end of each class.
Don’t worry about the homework, though, we aren’t asking you to do hours and hours of work, just 15 minutes of work with your dog, and it’s all based on things that you’ll be using in your day-to-day lives.