Good Dog Enrichment & Training

We have been working with Good Dog for a couple of years now. They are so so good with our toy poodle Gigi. She is so smart and needs the monthly training day with them. She has been much calmer and responds well to our commands and is in general a much better dog to be around. The trainers at Good Dog are great and have given us so many good ideas and recommendations. Gigi enjoys her time there.

I’m so disappointed with the experience we have had with Good Dog. They came highly recommended by the people of Reddit, as well as other searches. During intake, we talked about my concerns with my dog and decided that a package with 6 day training sessions and 6 private lessons, with some being in home, would be a good fit. It was over $1,300. I knew good training would cost at least this much, so I was prepared for this. I was also prepared to have to do work with my dog outside of training. On our first night, I was told to buy a bunch of extra enrichment toys and change his routine. It was fine, but that was extra money I didn’t expect to put out right then. I did it because I wanted him to be successful. We went through 4 of 6 day trainings. On the 3rd day, the trainer told me that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for him to continue with day training since he is not doing well going into the kennels. He doesn’t love the crate at home, but he will get into it with treats. This rubbed me the wrong way because as a training facility, I would think that there would be some way to work with him to get him used to it since he is there with them all day, and after all…it’s a training facility. I have attached the conversation I had in the messaging portal with them regarding this interaction. We ended up going forward with accepting an additional private lesson since he wouldn’t be able to continue day training. The first private lesson was fine. The second one had to be rescheduled due to illness, which was also okay since I was also sick, I understood and was glad that it was rescheduled. During the rescheduled lesson, we had to make changes to our upcoming lessons since our work schedule had since changed due to a new position. We were told at the time of rescheduling our future lessons that our next lesson would be an in-home. Fast forward to today, the day of our in-home session, we were waiting outside our apartment so we could let them in, just to be called almost 10 minutes after our session started with the trainer asking where we were. On the trainer’s end, it showed us as in-store for the lesson. This was the final straw and we decided we are canceling the rest of our sessions and eating the cost. We were already not happy with our experience because of the day training situation, and we feel like we aren’t learning much. We’ve gone over what feels like the same things each time, and we aren’t seeing much improvement despite working with our dog every single day. This additional inconvenience was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. We are going to take what we’ve learned and build on it and hopefully he is successful since we can’t afford to spend thousands more on training at this point.

We worked with head trainer, Cait, to prepare our dogs for a new baby with the baby prep package. It was important to us to set our 7 and 9 year old pups up for success before bringing home baby since they had virtually no experience with tiny humans. We haven’t had the baby yet, but after several months of private lessons, in-home lessons, and day training we have learned so much and built really great skills that I’m confident will make the transition easier. Additionally, our dogs have loved every minute of working with the Good Dog team. I was nervous about sending them for day training because they don’t always like other dogs, but they quickly bonded with the trainers and I could tell they had great days at school working on skills, loose leash walking, and supervised socializing based on the detailed progress reports we got. If you are looking for dog training in the St. Louis area, I cannot recommend Good Dog enough. It’s an investment for sure, but the payoff has been worth it. Update: we had the baby and Good Dog continued to be AMAZING in their support. We had kept back one in-home lesson from the package at the advice of Cait (10/10 would recommend) so when the girls started getting a little nervous with baby we were able to call for support. Cait came to observe the girls with the baby and gave us actionable suggestions for increasing everyone’s comfort and easing the transition. She’s also checked in with us multiple times since and been so encouraging. I’m not sure what we would have done without Cait and Good Dog to help our first babies get used to our human baby. Truly can’t say enough good things about Cait and the Good Dog team!

1-1 training here was helpful for us. I could never recommend the day training program to anyone I picked up my dog from the first day and he had a bloody snout. No one called me to let me know he was struggling, no one let me know what happened when I picked him up, once I saw his wound in the car I had to go back in to ask what happened. You have to sign some major release forms to work with them so it’s just not a lot of security on the consumer side. And if you buy a package with them they are Strict on their business policies , absolutely no refunds or protection on this side of things, no matter the circumstances. I was surprised because this was the place most recommended to me when I asked community for training recs.. so I felt confident going in and buying a plan with them. I shared about my experience with someone at the dog park and felt validated in that they also had a strange unprofessional experience with Good Dog.