Group class or private training: which one does your dog need?

This is the decision that changes what the next twelve weeks cost you in money and in time, and most owners get it wrong in the same direction: they buy private lessons for a dog that needs repetitions, which is the expensive way to solve a cheap problem.

What a group class actually gives you

Repetitions around distractions, in a room full of other dogs and their owners. That is the product. A dog that sits beautifully in your kitchen and falls apart at the park has not learned a sit, it has learned a kitchen. The class is the only affordable way to buy enough distraction practice to make the behaviour hold.

It also gives you other people. Watching somebody else's dog fail and then succeed at the same exercise is genuinely useful, and most owners leave the first class relieved that they are not the only ones.

What private training actually gives you

Attention in your own house. The trainer sees the front door your dog bolts through, the counter it surfs, the exact spot in the hallway where the guarding happens. None of that is visible in a class.

It is also the right answer when everything has to change at once: three people in the household disagreeing about the rules, a dog that is too aroused to be in a room with eight others, or a problem that only happens at home.

The three cases where a group class wastes your money

• Your dog has bitten a person or another dog, or guards food, toys or a person. This goes to a review first, because a class is not a safe place to work it out.
• Your dog cannot be within sight of another dog without escalating. Being in the room is not practice at that distance, it is flooding.
• The problem is the household, not the dog. If three people give three different instructions, the class will teach the dog that the rules depend on who is holding the leash.

The case where private training is an expensive shortcut

A dog that pulls, jumps up, or will not come when called in the yard does not need one-to-one attention. It needs the same exercise taught once and then repeated two hundred times around distractions. Twelve weeks of group classes costs $950 and gives you roughly fifteen hours with a trainer; the same money buys under 8 hours of private time, with far fewer distractions to practice around.

What it comes down to

If you can describe your problem in a sentence and it happens in more than one place, it is a training problem and a class fixes it. If the problem only exists in one room, or involves a person the dog is guarding, or involves teeth, it is not and it does not.