I am a huge advocate of training your own dog.

I have worked in "Board & Train Kennels", and here are a couple of the little known problems the general public doesn't really see, which I can share with you.

There is generally no such thing as a "money back guarantee". If you aren't personally satisfied with the dog's training level, bring the dog back, and they will continue the substandard training a little bit longer for you, all you have to do is act more stressed and rude than the kennel owners and you'll get your wish.

There is a "written policy" to never ever tell the client the "truth" under the threat of the trainer or employee losing their job. Questions about problems will be directed to the business owners, not the trainers doing the actual work. Employees are told to:
     1.) Totally sequester the truth, or
     2.) Sugar coat the truth to keep the information soft and palatable so the client will gladly come back and spend more money.

Potential clients are told that the Kennels are "open to the public for tours," but will only show them to you when they are spotless. They will not let you see them how they really look during the course of the day.

Board and Train Kennels have a pretty high financial "overhead" and will charge a pretty steep rate of exchange on the order of $400 per week, for 6 weeks, which is about $2,400 for simple basic commands! Nothing fancy at all! Things you could easily teach your dog if you had the time.

Dogs tend to emotionally bond to the trainer while the dog is away from home for that 6 or 12 weeks of kennel training, and then has to be reintroduced to the owner and family almost as if they were complete strangers.

Dogs dropped off for Day Care, are routinely used to do "social tests" on "new unknown dogs" coming to stay at the facility for the first time. Your own friendly Day Care dog could be subjected to an aggressive dog at any time. Sometimes these bites require stitches, maybe the dog loses a toe, or requiring stitches on it's face, or torso (actually happened). Sometimes stitches are required on people as well, at no fault of their own other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time while doing kennel tours. These "incidents" occur roughly about one every 6 weeks or so. Unreported bites occur about 1 or 2 every few weeks!

The phone answering person is not a trainer, but will gladly tell you all kinds of things to impress you. Exactly what she has been instructed to say is what you want to hear in order to persuade you to bring your dog in for training. When the dog arrives at the facility the trainer may decide to use "other methods" (punishment) without your knowledge or prior consent. Many times the information you "verbally" agree to on over the phone never filters even down to the trainer doing the work. Be sure to get everything in writing!

You maybe offered "potty training" as a possible training possability during your stay. Your dog will then live all day in a stainless steel crate (and sleeps in a plastic one at night,) and is taken out every 2-4 hours for a few minutes of training, and eventually the trainer can put the "potty behavior" on cue. However the crux of the problem is that this does not teach the dog to potty correctly at your home. After spending your money, you will still have to train your dog at home, again, to be successful. Potty Training cannot be trained in a kennel situation, when the dog really needs to learn how to potty at your home. AND it's 50/50 chance that the dog will actually learn to potty in his crate (or kennel run) and learn to be complacient about it.

Visiting your dog is always permitted. However because of the trainer's inability to train the dog cleanly, the trainers are afarid that an hour with the owner's will mess up the dog's training and set the dog back. So the owners are "informed" in writing, that they are not, under any circumstances, allowed to tell their dog any commands at all. Clients are told that it will "ruin the training" in an explanation that may "seems plausible", but really, a dog in training should show some signs of the training progress.

If you happen to "stop by" for a visit, without an appointment, be prepared to be ignored. Management tells the trainers that since the client didn't pay for a "lesson", spending 10 minutes with the client is grounds to be "warned" by management, and basically threatened with their job. It is the kindness of a "rebellious" trainer if they choose to spend time with you.

The grass in yard may look clean and free of dog stools, but thousands of dogs for over 50 years, have pooped, peed, thrown up on the grass in the yard. Conditions are not as sanitary as they seem.

Dogs actively learn to poop in their crates (at night) or runs (during the day), while being unsupervised.

Many dogs can develop "kennel problems", such as "fence fighting" in the runs, or learning to bark through a combination of internal stress/frustration and by watching other dogs in adjacent runs.

There is no noise abatement to speak of, and your dog's sensitive hearing is exposed to 130db of barking, off-and-on, 24 hours a day, and are routinely yelled at to "shut-up", shaken "nail cans" at (makes a noise), and eventually a citronella collar or shock collar will be placed on your dog if it continues to be persistent. And there are many dogs that learn to bark through anything you use to punish the behavior while visiting the kennel.

Never tell the kennel staff that you "just want to breed the dog just once", without any fore knowledge of the process, as a way to gain more information about it. The staff will talk very rudely about you behind your back and then smile like a salesman in your presence.

The phrase "Positive Training", is such a public catchphrase, that even prong collar trainers use the term freely. Buyer beware. There is no such thing as 100% purely positive training for shutting down the more problematic behaviors. Kennels are people in business to make a profit. They have time constraints, and must train the dog on a schedule, whether the dog is really ready to learn or not. Any facility that sell you on the idea that they are "Positive Trainers" are fraudulent on their face. Positive trainers in kennels regularly tether/restrain the dog, squirt with water, socially isolate the dog, use citronella spray collar collars, use body language to pressure the dog, shock collars, pinch collars, force the dog to comply, and tell the dog "NO!" all the time, as if "No!" is the only word many trainers know.

Diseases like, kennel cough, canine influenza, spread quickly in a kennel situation, through water, soles of tennis shoes and common tools like pooper scoopers that are shared between runs. If you visit enough, the odds are very good that your dog will become sick eventually, just like a child that goes to public school. The dog owners are told to "except" the risk and pay for the veterinary bill anyway.

Parasites like worms and fly maggots are common problems in Kennel situations, that can be picked up by your dog and brought home to infect you as well. Demand that your dog be brushed daily!

You will never know when your dog will be randomly pulled out of the "population" to be a "demonstration dog" by the Head Trainer/Owner, as means to show how the "contingencies of punishment really work" so other staff trainer's can "see and understand it" during any one of the mandatory meetings, facilitated by the owners. The dogs they pick out to abuse are truly at random. If your otherwise outgoing dog gets home and rolls over and urinates on itself, you know what happened. The stories I could tell you MAKE ME SHUTTER!

If your "dominantly assertive" dog went to a positive training facility because of aggression issues, if was "positively trained" with treats, then it will most likely bite again. Count on it! And after you spent all that money too! Typical positive only trainers are not taught any other way to train but feeding the dog. They actually have less tools in their "tool box", and there will be many dogs they can't fix with food only. Fear aggression they can fix, but not a dog that has learned how to use aggression, and likes it. Food for aggression is "fake training", and false advertising. Treats can only mask the problem in side the dog. This is really not the trainer's fault. Trainers are judiciously scrutinized for applying any "aversive" techniques after other positive training methods fail, so they don't know how to use it properly, or when. Trainers in a "positive training facility" never get the opportunity to learn how to apply correction in a way that the dog can understand, because they mentally trapped into a stigma of being "positive only". When you get your dominant dog home, you will still be left to "manage" the dog, so you are really no better off than before you took your dog in for training. Certainly the dog does not usually go home "fixed". The dog is then just a little more sneaky, and a bit of a time bomb waiting to go off, maybe around strangers or other dogs, at the most inopportune moments.

Clients are always offered a "free evaluation", to have "knowledgeable" staff assess your dog's problems. But be assured that this is not for the dog or owner's benefit at all. It is a type of "fact finding sales pitch" to persuade you to leave your dog, and have it trained at their higher prices. If training information is given out at an evaluation, the trainer will be reprimanded severely. The only goal for an evaluation is to "make the sale". This evaluation is usually given by the one that has the most experience at making the "pitch", usually taken care of by the Kennel Owners themselves.

There are about 10 truly satisfied customers for each single unsatisfied customers, I guess that is a fair ratio.

I guess…

Bottom Line…

Save your money and train your own dog!
Take your dog to class, Hire a good private trainer and work the dog yourself!

If you don't have time to train your own dog (15 minutes a day), may be you could do better with a hamster.

Let me show you how easy it is to create a dog ANYONE would LOVE to own!