Seattle Agility Center

I took the beginning obedience course with my 1 year old corgi. I was really enjoying it and finding it helpful but during the last class (and honestly sprinkled throughout the entire course) the instructor would yell at me if my corgi barked more than a couple times. If you have a corgi, you know they bark a lot. It’s a behavior I’ve been working on with her (and admittedly struggling with). But the instructor never really offered any insight as to how to stop her barking besides ignoring her (which doesn’t work) or making her do rapid fire tricks and shoving treats down her throat. So every class I would have to do this while simultaneously trying to listen to what the instructor was teaching. One class I did this so much to prevent the instructor from yelling at us that my dog was sick the next day. You’d think a beginning obedience course would be more empathetic to this. It’s literally for beginners and about obedience. During the last class we did parkour obstacles, and every dog was doing obstacles at once. This was very exciting for my corgi and she was barking. I was doing my best to quiet her down but the instructor made a comment “if that were my dog I’d be shooting her in the face with a water gun” and then made a point to pull me aside again and ask me if I’d ever tried that. I awkwardly laughed it off but it put a really sour taste in my mouth about the entire experience. I was really excited to try other courses here, but now I’m not going to. I refuse to use negative reinforcement with my dog and make her afraid of me. It was baffling to me because the course itself focused on positive reinforcement. I’m just really disappointed and I don’t feel comfortable coming here again.