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Daniel Andersonvia Google

over 2 years ago

The training club does not follow American Kennel Club guidelines for positive dog training. We were in the puppy etiquette class at ST Paul Dog Training Club. In the 3 weeks we attended we did not get any handouts on what to work on during the week. They were promised from week 2 on. We even emailed the contact us from the web page and were told that we would be emailed and it did it not happen. The class felt haphazard and without instructions it was difficult to work on the homework outside of class. We stopped attending classes after prong collars were introduced as a requirement.

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Santina Uvia Google

about 3 years ago

This review is about 10 yrs late, but this place still haunts me and it seems that I'm not the only one who had a horrible experience. One of the worst places I've gone for dog training. I'm honestly shocked they're still in business. For being a dog training "club" they don't seem to understand that like people, different dogs have different learning styles. Not every dog learns from negative reinforcement and aggressiveness which seems to be their style. I felt like my dog and I were targeted by the trainer, an older woman with short gray hair, as I seemed to constantly get yelled at. If my dog was supposed to be sitting and she got up I was immediately yelled at. She was a PUPPY and learning! I was also told your dog is not allowed to socialize before or after class. Really?? Socialization is important for dogs and maybe if they could say"hi" to one another they would be less distracted in class. When teaching the "down" command I asked if I could say, "lay down ", as my dog knew that command, and was sternly told no. The assistant trainer, a tall burly guy, walked over to me almost rolling his eyes and told me it was ok. He seemed to be more reasonable with a calmer demeanor. Too bad he wasn't teaching the class. I remember telling a woman in another class that I was constantly being yelled at, and not even 2 minutes later she witnesses the trainer yelling at me cuz my dog had stopped and sniffed another dog as we were walking through the room. Needless to say I was over the abuse and stopped going after about 4 classes. I wasn't paying them to yell at me, I was paying them so I could teach my pup to be her best self. If you love your dog, your dog is sensitive, and/or you don't like paying for abuse, PLEASE go elsewhere. I've had wonderful experiences at other training facilities.

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Jacobvia Google

almost 4 years ago

I can’t express my thankfulness and empathy for Saint Paul dog trinity I have been there for close to a year and have always been happier going there. Very professional and helpful with everything I recommend people with nervous dogs as they understand all dogs situations and are very flexible. Prices are reasonable. AKC approved, side note - reviews from months or years old may be true for the time being and is not true as far as I have seen I 100% recommend this club.

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Abbie Gothamvia Google

over 4 years ago

The Training has definitely helped my dog and I don’t regret my time training here, but what’s helped most with my dogs obedience is my work at home versus time spent in class. Class was most helpful to learn new/better ways of doing different skills my dog knew beforehand and gave my dog good socialization to ignoring other dogs and people to focus on me during training. I also enjoyed learning the proper professional dog obedience rules. My biggest frustration about this club is the lack of communication with anyone unless it’s in person and initiated by you. They have never answered their phones for me, their voicemail hasn’t been updated (last time I checked) and their website is also not updated regularly and shows inconsistent information with class schedules. A stressful example is that I was told class was at 11:15am on Wednesday’s (i have an email confirming it after calling about 3 times and getting no answer so deciding to email them instead and didn’t show up to class that week because they didn’t get back to me quickly and the website said the time 11:15 too) so I show up at 11:15am on Wednesday a couple weeks later because I had confirmation it was at this time and found my intended class was over and done with and had started at 10:15am. Another difficulty I had was sometimes the methods of teaching are a bit rough for what I’d like done to my dog. They would push me to be physically aggressive with my dog (grabbing him by his face and “bouncing” him when he made a simple mistake usually with a stay) (also, this kind of correction has a chance of making my dog riled up and angry versus teaching him he is wrong) when I felt my dog understood his error after my vocal correction. My last and most recent struggle with this dog training club is that with the not updated website, not answering their phones then not having a receptionist present after all classes, made it very difficult for me to question anywhere about the agility classes I was interested in getting my dog into, but I assumed that after my 10 week intermediate obedience class was over it would go nicely into an agility session. Finally after completing my intermediate obedience (but missing the last week due to a vacation so I don’t know if I graduated or not because they don’t keep in touch with their students outside of in person face to face regarding anything to do with classes) my mom stayed after and talked with a staff who said it was too late to join the agility classes because they were in the middle of their session and i needed to find somewhere else if I was interested in agility anytime soon. I wish I could have had any kind of information saying that these classes were starting and if interested to sign up, but again, the website is no help and I didn’t think to ask seeing as how I was in the middle of a 10 week long session and thought all sessions would have a similar start and end period. Bottom line, it is a well informed dog training club and they produce well behaved dogs if you put the work into it, I hope not everyone has the same experience as me, but in my experience here I never felt truly welcome and I wish that wasn’t the case. I’m committed to training my dog but I will find a different place to go unless they get with the times and start taking advantage of the technology available to them.

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D Bvia Google

almost 8 years ago

Puppy Einstein class was fun and very helpful. The participants were people who loved their puppies and wanted them to have a good start and there was a variety of mixed and pure bred puppies in class. The instructor, Amber, really had good tips for behavior issues and educated us in characteristics and challenges of behaviors of different breeds. She reassured us that sometimes we would get frustrated and that was normal. She never made anybody in the class feel like they were doing poorly (I read this in other reviews about some instructors in this club). The instructor observed each puppy and helped the owners work effectively with that pup. Registration was easy. The only negative experience was a very crabby lady at the front desk the first night, but that was the only time we interacted with her.