Dog Lovers Obedience School

I have used Dog Lovers for their puppy classes and board and train program and have had excellent experiences with both. Emily is extremely professional and worked (very patiently!) to find the perfect training tools/techniques to fit my puppy and me. My pup adored the program and loves going to class! I've recommended Dog Lovers to several dog-owning friends and I plan to use them again in the future for their intermediate classes.

We attended a class with our pup and it became very clear to us within the first few minutes that this was not the training facility for us. There were 20 dogs (and owners) packed into a pretty small room. There was very little guidance on what was going on at all or what training methods were going to be use. The class started with us walking around in a circle to practice loose leash walking. We use a harness with our pup so it's pretty easy to keep him from pulling, but other than us keeping the leash tight to keep him close we received absolutely no guidance or training on how to loose leash walk. We just kept the leash short, which isn't training our dog anything its just physically keeping in him closer to us. We then had to stop and sit. Our puppy hasn't learned sit yet, that's why we were at a training class.... We stopped and our pup didn't sit, no surprise, so the instructor came over and said "have him sit". Seeing as he doesn't know the sit command, he just stood there. The trainers response was to yank him up by his collar until he gagged and shove his butt onto the ground. If I had wanted to physically force my dog into positions I could have done that at home, I don't need a stranger to do that. We didn't go there to be taught how to shove our dog onto the ground in a sit position he went to train him to sit. We went through a few other activities with pretty much the same outcome. Someone's dog didn't listen so she came over and physically shoved them into the desired position, or the dog wouldn't listen so she sprayed it in the face with bitter apple spray. The last straw for me was when she was trying to demonstrate "leave it". She would put a treat two inches from the dogs nose and if the dog reached for it she hit them in the face. I get the concept she was trying to get across, but it was clear that the dogs had no idea what was going on and some of them were even frightened. There wasn't even a consistent command with them being hit in the nose, so how were they supposed to know better. I get that everyone has different training styles, but the style of Dog Lovers Obedience school is not for us, and to be honest I find it incredibly hard to believe that hitting your dog in the nose or spraying them in the face in an effective way to gain their respect or train them in any way.