Several of our articles explain how to train a dog at home, but we don’t want to commercialize this material in a way that suggests dog training is "so easy it can be all done at home!" Dog obedience training is demanding, and it’s best achieved inside a professional dog obedience school. Obedience class provides the perfect environment for training a dog for several reasons. This article explains those reasons in detail.

The most immediate benefit of classroom dog obedience training is socialization. Because you’ll be in a group of other dog owners and their pets, your dog learns how to get along with other dogs and other people. Another benefit is the professional instruction you’ll get. This type of setting doesn’t solely focus on training your dog. It also trains you on how to train your dog, complete with the typical distractions and all.

Just so the distractions don’t get out of hand, you should try and find a dog obedience school of 10 students or less. This size affords time to speak with an instructor before and after class if need be. The typical dog obedience training class only takes about one hour per week, so you’re bound to have some questions as you reinforce the skills you’ve learned at home every day for about 15-30 minutes. You’ll have a more productive week of homework if you break up your practice in smaller intervals of course, especially if you’re training a puppy. Three 5 minute intervals of training are sufficient for puppies while older dogs may require a full 10 minutes or more. If you don’t think 5 minutes is sufficient, don’t worry. Your instructor will probably have a guidebook you can study at home and use to bone up additional skills.

What will your dog learn at a dog obedience school? Both you and your dog will learn basic obedience commands and skills: sit, stand, lay, heel, stay, etc. What this type of class doesn’t do however, is train dogs with special behavioral problems. That’s a job for a professional private trainer.

A private trainer works with a dog suffering from a specific behavior problem in the environment that it’s most comfortable in: its own home. Such a trainer also teaches owners how to handle a problematic pet. But because these lessons take place at the owner’s home, they’re much more expensive than classroom lessons.

If you’re interested in hiring a private trainer, or attending a dog training class, you must take care to select the right teacher. The way that a dog is trained will influence the way the dog interacts with others in the future. Should you hire a trainer that advocates negative training, you’re going to face a lot of emotional problems down the road.

Ask around for quality leads from people you know and trust. Your own vet should have several leads on hand that teach using positive training methods. But don’t rush into a decision. Make an appointment with your choices so that you can see for yourself how the trainer interacts with the dogs that it trains. Inquire about credentials, degrees, experience, and memberships in well known dog organizations. The more qualified and experienced a trainer is, the more comfortable you can feel. Bear in mind that classroom trainers needn’t be as qualified to train, especially for problem behaviors, since they are primarily training you to work with your own dog.