Dog Trainer’s Advice: Why You Should Never Book Your Dog into a Boarding & Training Facility

Why You Should Never Book Your Dog into a Dog Boarding & Training Facility

Booking your dog into a training and boarding facility is one of the biggest wastes of money, let me tell you why.

1. Dogs are situational learners. This means that they can learn different behaviours in different places and with different people. Dogs learn through experience and like to create habits and routines. If you do not do things exactly the same way they did at a boarding and training facility, you will not get the same results either, your dog will simply go back to their old behaviours with you and at home.
2. If you don’t have a strong relationship and bond with your dog, you don’t get to enjoy the benefits of it either. Have you ever noticed that the most well-behaved dogs are trained by their owners on a regular basis? They are the type of dogs that listen to their owners and happily obey. I have been training dogs for 12 years and I can honestly say that I have never been contacted by a person who regularly trains their dog to a high level of obedience for any behavioural issues. They simply do not need my help, they don’t have issues! I get contacted by people who engage with their dogs very little if at all and not through training. So having your dog trained by someone else doesn’t improve your relationship with your dog!
3. Training and boarding facilities use harsh training methods. I can guarantee this, there’s a reason why they don’t want you around to see what happens. If service dogs take a year of full-time training and they might still fail you can be sure that miracles do not happen in a short few weeks in a training facility. In fact, these facilities would feel the pressure of giving you results and unfortunately, fear is a strong motivator. So if you love and care for your dog, do not put them into a position where they will receive harsh handling.
4. There are behaviours that can not be resolved for you by someone else. Toilet training a puppy is one of those things. This is actually a fairly common thing that people seem to think can be resolved in just a few hours when in reality puppies can not fully hold their bladder before 5 months of age, so toilet training will take management and training until then.