Petco dog training

[BellaBay2]

I am getting ready to put my 4month old rottweiler into training classes at Petco. Was just wondering if that is a good place to go? I heard good things but wanted to make sure. I also have a 4 year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever who had lessons when he was a puppy too but his was not in a place like that.

Bella my rotty is a good girl but just want her nice and calm as she gets older... has anyone taken their dog there?

Robin

 

[sunnyd]

Cute! I had a pit/lab named Bella, and she went through the Petsmart training. I imagine they''re quite similar. It''s probably more relaxed than training not at a store, but it worked fine for her. It was good to have the distraction of people, kids and other dogs not in the class wandering around while training. My ex and I also didn''t keep up with training at home (poor parenting skills

) but she was okay.

 

[BellaBay2]

LOL= Thank you. We try pretty hard to be on track lol , BayLee our chessy is great.. very protective and when I tell hm commands Bella usually follows lol when she knows I have a treat! Everywhere I go I seem to be finding TREATS in my pocket!!! LOL

 

[AmberGretchen]

I think that those classes can be great. One thing to be careful of though - make sure that wherever you go, they are teaching you training techniques based on positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement, punishment, or aggressive physical handling of the dog. A good example would be teaching a dog to "sit." The most effective way to teach it is (as you''ve already learned LOL) with a treat in your hand, and you use the treat to "lure" the dog into the sit position by moving the hand with the treat up and back over the dog''s head. As soon as the dog''s butt hits the ground, you tell the dog "yes" or "good" or use a clicker, and give the treat.

Any trainer that teaches using leash jerks, or pushing the dog''s butt down physically - run the other way and don''t look back. I know that Cesar Milan and other, similarly misguided individuals promote these approaches, but I can tell you both from my own experiences and from extensive conversations with a lot of fantastic and very experienced dog trainers, that these approaches can easily backfire in a very bad way.

So as long as the training is positive reinforcement based, then I''d say you''re golden

And good for you for doing obedience training with your babies - its a fantastic way to bond with your doggie and improve their behavior in every aspect of their life with you.

FYI, for more information on positive reinforcement training, in case my explanation wasn''t totally clear, google Jean Donaldson or Ian Dunbar - both are excellent examples of this type of training and they have websites and books and so forth.

 

[BellaBay2]

Thank you. Bella is pretty good with sitting thanks to her brother baylee, lol but definately understand the positive and the negative and thanks again for your feed back.
Robin