we have just signed up our two new adopted dogs, kash and lucy, for obedience classes. I have wanted to put them in classes since we adopted them 4 months ago because i think training does amazing things for both the owner and the dog. I took layla to training when she was younger and even though she wasn't a bad dog to begin with, the change was amazing. It was so cool to see her want to work towards something and be so eager to please me!
Anyways, since then we moved out of the city and to a small town. We work in the city so it's tough to get home and drive back in to the city again with the dogs if we want to take them to classes. Luckily, i found out that a trainer from the city (from a different facility than where i took layla previously) was coming out to our small town one day a week to offer obedience classes in the evenings. So we signed right up.
Last night was our first class, with just us and no dogs. We found out we are not using treats or toys to train, as i did previously with layla in her classes. The trainer said the only way to train a dog is by using a choke collar
everyone else is going out to buy them (the next smallest dog is a beagle, the others are large breeds... And there are only 5 dogs in our time slot including our two).
After the class was over i went up to the trainer and said my dogs are not using choke collars. We have a maltese cross and a yorkie cross and according to the rescue, lucy has had issues with collapsing trachea. Our other dog at home has spinal issues and paralysis... There's no way i'm going to yank any of these little guys around by their necks!
So the trainer said if we refuse to use the choke collars, we can look at corrective harnesses such as the gentle leader to discourage pulling on the leash. Have any of you guys used this harness and what do you think of it?
I am feeling a little discouraged and i'm not sure how far we will get in these classes by not following his directions. We discussed just not going last night, but we've already paid $320 for both dogs to go and we'll lose that if we just don't go anymore. I guess we'll just give it a try and see how far they get. I'm regretting not looking into it further, but there was no information i could find on his website about this kind of training.