Graduation Standards

When it comes to clients and what they want, there is a general breakdown into an 80/20 principle like there are so many other things in life.

The 80% want their dog to listen well, generally not do bad behaviors and have general control over their dog out in public.

The other 20% want their dog to not do one thing specifically and they generally hire us for one or two things specifically.

Overall, we want to train the dogs to the expectations of the owners. If the owners want some general commands, then let’s do that. If they want their dog trained strict and want their dog to have less freedom then that is what we need to do. The idea is that we have a general standard but we tailor it to the client and their wants/needs.

Graduation Standards For The 80%

For these clients to graduate…

Obedience Commands: Their dogs listen to their commands within the first or second time of giving the command generally. The dog has a solid grasp on what is being asked of it. For On-Leash the dog follows the commands on-leash. For Off-Leash the dog follows the commands on and off leash.

Problem Behaviors: Their problem behaviors have either gone away entirely or are substantially reduced. Most importantly, that the client understands and knows a couple of ways of how to correct and fix the unwanted behavior.

Games: In order for these clients to graduate it is strongly encouraged that they come to the games at least once. In order to do this you can just ask them their availability and then say “Can I add you to the games list this week?” and you can do this as the dog becomes ready.

Not only do we want to train their dog around distractions we want them to see how fun they are but also so they keep their membership going. Note: coming to the games has a compounding effect on the training at home so it is in their best interest to come to the games BEFORE graduating.

Graduation Standards For The 20%

For the 20% of people who hire us for one or two things, these are the things we will really hammer in on and work on fixing. For instance, these clients may want to walk without pulling, have off-leash recall, stop jumping on guests, stay at the top of the stairs when they walk down, etc. So for these clients the big idea is to really nail the behaviors they want down. The other things that aren’t what they want are “nice to haves” but not “must haves” to them.

In order for these clients to graduate…

The one or two things they hired us to solve are solved. The dog responds well to whatever the behaviors are.

If the dog learns the other things, great. But for these clients this isn’t necessary normally. This isn’t saying don’t teach it, but rather that it doesn’t have to be at the level other clients want their dogs at generally.

We still encourage these clients to come to the games and you inviting them over and over will be crucial, but lots of times these particular types of clients just don’t care.

The 1% of clients who Don’t graduate

For whatever reason every now and then we have clients who buy training from us, do a few lesson or almost all of them and then just don’t graduate. Graduation time comes around, they cancel their lesson and then they never finish. This is still a mystery to us after all these years. These people are very few and far in-between, but it does happen.

The goal here is to reach out diligently, document your attempts to reach out in our database and then eventually mark them as a non-graduate if they don’t get it done.

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