Vancouver, Canada
8206 Ontario St #100
N/A
+1 6042679500
Thorough teaching experience. Instructor was very knowledgeable and engaged with all our questions.
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I took a class with Alice. Every lesson that she taught somehow related to a dog that she knew that died because of a freak accident. This alarmist, shock value approach doesn’t work for everyone, especially given how extremely weird the times are right now. My experience was that Alice was very patronizing and frequently guilt tripped the owners. Every person in the class was constantly criticized for doing things wrong with their dogs, without providing much constructive feedback. She immediately judges and criticizes your practices without knowing the full context of the issue, ignoring nuance. In my view, dog training should be just as focussed on developing a respectful relationship with the owner just as much as their dog, and this point was entirely missed with Alice. While some of the techniques were useful, and the assistant teacher was very friendly, it’s hard to recommend this class with how poorly and unfairly Alice treated people. She sets you up for failure, which is ironic given the subject being taught. We’ve been to other classes where you get criticized, but receive constructive feedback right away, with a more positive and encouraging environment.
When I first got a dog, I thought dog classes had the most basic information about taking care of a dog that I'd already known from having dogs growing up. I ended up signing up for \Puppy SmartStart\ only for the purpose of taking further classes such as Agility. Unfortunately, this class was postponed by a few months due to COVID - but Alice was kind enough to set-up six personal consultations at no charge (which would have been much pricier had I signed up for these consultations elsewhere). This was extremely selfless of Alice, who runs the business herself and goes to show how much she cares for her business and the treatment of dogs overall. During these consultations, there was so much that I learned that it was very exhausting and stressful, but in the best sense possible because I was learning so much. Seeing all the negative reviews kind of baffles me - I told Alice right from the start that I didn't mind if she was blunt with me because I'd rather she get the message across in the best way possible. Even though I expressed this, at no point did I ever feel like she was condescending, and she provided me with all the information I feel like I'd needed and so much more than I could expect in every session. After this class, we did take Tracy's \Beginner Life Skills\ class for the puppies that missed training due to COVID, and I also felt like she was great and informative as well. I would recommend DogSmart to anybody looking for training for their dog, whether they've had plenty of dogs before or not. Being in the classroom environment with your dog will help it get climatized to focus on you rather than other dogs, and you will probably end up learning more essential information than your dog will (even though by the end of each of these one-hour courses, the dogs end up visibly mentally exhausted as well).
Taking adult dog life skills class. Tracey our teacher is very kind and knowledgeable! Our dog was hit by a car just after starting the classes and they had no problem postponing the classes until she was all healed. Very happy with the training!
We went there because our puppy barks when meeting strangers and other dogs. The trainer just taught us to keep feeding my puppy treats once he barked. I think this is not professional. My dog behaves even worse after the training. Totally useless!
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