Columbia Canine Sports Center

I took a nosework class in the second half of 2020. I recently moved to the area and had never taken a class here before. My dog and I had trained elsewhere in one of the odors, so this class was supposed to challenge him in finding more difficult hides of that odor. I specifically discussed this through email before signing up for the class to make sure my dog was a good fit for the requirements. When I arrived 15 minutes before class began, I was impressed by the size of the facility. However, it seemed several classes were happening simultaneously and no one was there to direct me to my class. I had to ask multiple people and finally was able to find the person teaching the class, who I believe is also an owner of the facility. While I am used to this sort of disorganization with all-volunteer dog clubs, I was taken aback by a business being conducted in such a manner. After the first class, it became obvious that one or two of the dogs signed up needed training at a more fundamental level before doing the advanced work, so the trainer decided to split the class time in two with one or two dogs getting half an hour of training and then the other four to six dogs in the class would come for the last half an hour. Attendance was variable by the week, so I can only give a range of the number of dogs. It seems the trainer had double-booked herself though, so she would leave after the first 15 minutes of my portion of the class. As each dog would take a turn in the ring sniffing for hides, if I wasn't at the front of the line each week, any questions I had would go unanswered as the trainer wasn't there to ask. The other people in the more advanced half of the class were very familiar with the trainer and had taken multiple classes there of various types. I had a lot of questions since CCSC trains nosework differently than I was taught. For instance, in my previous classes, we hadn't yet touched on having multiple hides in the same session, so my dog was very confused when he found the first hide but we stayed in the ring. I tried to tell him to continue searching, but the trainer told me not to say anything to him. My dog definitely started losing interest, but luckily I was able to kind of herd him into the next hide so he got distracted and eventually caught on. Another example, my dog walked right past a hide and no matter what I did, he wouldn't alert on it. I couldn't figure it out since his nose is pretty good, but the trainer wasn't there to ask as it was closer to the end of the session and she had already left. My dog became super frustrated with me and kept telling me there was nothing there. The next session, I asked the trainer about it and she said it was possible she had put out one of the other odors THAT MY DOG HAD NO EXPERIENCE WITH. At no point before did the trainer tell me that this could happen. I expressed my concerns, but she just kept going on that the hide should always be baited because of that possibility, but she hadn't baited it beforehand, nor had any of the other people in the class, and really there was no place to bait due to the set up. I was also completely inexperienced with the baiting method of training as this was not the way my other classes had functioned. This just showed the lack of individualized attention given even though the class size was fairly small. By the end of the fifth session, we had had many experiences with an odor being put out that my dog had not yet trained on and either I wasn't alerted to that fact beforehand or baiting the hide proved problematic. The trainer had essentially set me and my dog up to fail and then walked away. My dog became frustrated enough that the unsupported training was actually detrimental to his well-being and we chose to skip the last session, even after paying well over $100 for the class. If I had been planning to start competing in nosework, this class definitely would have set us back in. As such, it was still a complete waste of money as I have had to undo the damage done.