Should You Board and Train Your Dog?

Sending dogs away for training has become an extremely popular choice in recent years.

I do offer board and train, especially for service dogs in training, but it comes with 4 hours of human training along with the 2 weeks of dog training. It sounds totally wonderful to send your dog out to get trained in life or to fix behavior issues.  Most people can afford 2 maybe 3 weeks of this.  But is that realistic to expect a dog to be trained or fixed in that little time?  


How many years did you spend in school?  How good a job did you manage to procure based on that education?  Did you learn everything you needed to learn about how to live as an adult?  Do you really expect a dog, who is NOT human, to learn everything there is to know about living in a human world in 2 or 3 weeks?  Especially if that dog is not even 3 months old yet?


Here are some tips to help you set realistic expectations for your dog’s board & train program, and how to ensure your dog doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.

What can you expect in 2 or 3 weeks?

Answering this question is going to depend on what it is that you are sending your dog away to learn.  If it’s basic obedience and your dog is over 6 months old, you can expect quite a lot.  However, if you don’t ALSO get some training, are you going to understand what it was that your dog learned?  Most places that offer board and train do not train the humans.  They may give you a booklet of instructions, but how many people actually read the instructions for anything?


If your dog is under 6 months, you will get a dog who understands what training is, might be 90% potty trained, and has a good start on what will be expected of him through his years as your pet.  But this puppy is not a robot, it isn’t being programmed or brain washed and will still exhibit puppy behaviors.  This is especially true, again, if the humans don’t get any training on what the puppy learned and how to maintain it until the puppy has matured enough to keep to the program (usually 18 months to 2 years old).


A board and train program can be effective for teaching new behaviors and solving a few problem behaviors and is a good choice if you are also going on a vacation that won’t allow dogs. But in most cases, it’s just a bandage unless the humans involved also get trained in how to maintain what the dog learned.  This is the crux.  If the humans don’t also get some training, in a month or two, it will be as if you’d never sent the dog away.


I love teaching foundation skills, leash walking, and house manners.  I especially love training service dogs. I even love helping dogs gain confidence in a strange world and shedding behaviors that irritate humans or are dangerous to themselves or others.


In a 2- or 3-week board and train I can teach a lot.  Mostly I teach self-control, leash manners and the basics of obedience. It has been my experience however, that severe behavior issues cannot be resolved in that time frame.  Not even with punishment or corrective based methods.  The board and train can do a lot, but most severe behavior issues have their roots in the home environment. So, if the humans don’t change anything once the dog gets home, even when a shock collar was used in the training environment, the dog will lose everything it might have learned to do or avoid.

What you can’t expect from a board and train

A board and train program is not a quick, magical fix. There are no magic pills or powders and definitely no magic tools.  A dog is not a robot, you can’t program it like you can a computer or your DVR.  Believe me, I know about programming computers.  Dogs are not computers.  You also can’t truly punish or correct a dog into submission or into believing that humans can be a packleader or alpha dog.  Humans are primates not canids and most of the “think” about packleaders and alpha dogs is just humans projecting their own insecurities on another species.  Control at any cost.


Almost everyone who guarantees behavior change or even permanent obedience from a 2- or 3-week board and train is most likely using less than desirable methods and tools.  If they’ve done any training at one of the several dog training academy’s that promise to turn you into a dog trainer in 6 weeks and be able to train any sport, any service dog (including guide dogs) and handle any behavior issue, is most likely using these undesirable methods and tools. They are taught to promise and guarantee.  They are told that people are gullible and will believe just about anything.  Including that shock collars, the punch in the carotid artery, the kick to the kidneys or prong collars, do not hurt the dog.  And that the scream or squeal you hear is just the dog being startled. Anyone promising guaranteed behavior in a few weeks’ time is most likely doing any or all of the above-mentioned methods.


And method matters; the end never justifies the means.  Not with humans, and not with animals. There is no scientific inquiry or research that shows that heavy handed methods actually work and leave no future fallout.  In fact, most research has proven exactly the opposite.  Corrective and punishment-based methods, and the tools they promote, cause future behavior issues worse than what your dog exhibited before you sent them away for this type of training.


There is no short-term program, not even board and train, that can make your 8-week-old puppy grow up so fast that they understand that peeing and pooing indoors, no matter where, is an inappropriate place to eliminate.  It takes at least 4 months of potty training and even then, a dog will never be fully reliable.  It all depends on YOU!! I just had a discussion today with a client about his dog suddenly peeing and pooing indoors when he is gone from home. The dog is a full-grown adult.


I even had a fully trained service dog pee right in the middle of the concourse at the airport.  She had only been on the plane for an hour, but the stimulation of the flight filled her bladder and she couldn’t hold it.


One of the reasons I started training service dogs is because I had to help too many of them over the years get out of behavior trouble.  They were never taught how to think, how to problem solve or how to live as other than a service dog doing its job. And taught forcefully in most cases.  But even a medical alert dog who is “on” 24/7 has down time and is just a dog at those moments.

What happens to your dog in a board and train situation?

When you send your dog away for training, you are entrusting their physical and mental health to the trainer and possibly others that work for that trainer. There is no standardized code of ethics nor any required certification or testing for being a dog trainer, and no laws governing how to train a dog. 

There are many cities and states that are starting to advocate for the dog’s, however.  There are several European countries that ban shock collars and prong collars.  


So, unless you do your homework, you could be sending your dog for 2 to 3 weeks of torture.

Most correction and punishment-based trainers do not advertise that they do this.  You might be lucky and see prong or shock collars on pictures of dogs on their website.  Or even a page selling such tools. But unless you dig deep and ask pointed questions, you may not know what methods and tools any individual trainer uses. Be your dog’s advocate. Find a training program with transparency.


I once asked a question on Facebook to those trainers who use shock collars.  These trainers all claim that shock collars don’t hurt the dog.  So, the question I posed was “if the shock collar doesn’t hurt, then what about it is teaching the dog? How does the dog learn from the use of a shock collar?”.  I got answers ranging from “its just uncomfortable enough that they listen” to “I don’t really know how it works, its magic”.  


What should happen in a board and train situation is:

• 1.       At least one hour per day of teaching.  It doesn’t matter if it is broken up into segments during the day, but one hour is minimum in my opinion.  That is what has been optimum for the board and train dogs I’ve had.  
• 2.       Training should be more than just 6 or 7 things – sit, down, come, heel, stay, go to your mat and maybe stand or go around that.  A 2-hour stay seems to be common with many trainers.  I’ve never seen the point of that type of training, not even for a service dog.  What should be taught is self-control, impulse control, loose leashing walking (not just heeling on a tight leash), do nothing (my version of stay), wait (what many others call stay), no door-dashing, no inappropriate chewing on objects or people, potty outside, crate games but not living in a crate, and about 20 other behaviors that all lead to a dog that understands the human world and its rules.
• 3.       How to live in a human world, not a crate or kennel.

Before you commit to spending a $1000 or more and sending your dog away from home for 2 or 3 weeks, ask questions.  Find out exactly what is going to happen to your dog while in that training place.  Find out what happens to your dog when he does something right, what happens when he does something wrong, what tools will be used and the exact usage and fallout of those tools and an explanation of why that trainer uses those tools.  Find out also if you will receive instruction in what your dog learned and what maintenance you will have to do.  Done correctly, you should never have to do more than 5 minutes of maintenance training per day.

Be Aware, Be Prepared, Get Trained

Almost all behavior issues come from the home.  Most humans don’t understand dogs.  Especially those that profess that “all dogs love me”.  Dogs with behavior issues are either being misunderstood – i.e. normal dog behaviors are called problems because the human doesn’t like them, not because they are actual problems or abnormal behavior – or the humans are actively promoting abnormal behavior. They may not realize they are promoting this behavior, but it is true that aggression breeds aggression and a heavy hand produces fear in those that lack confidence.


So, if the humans don’t change, don’t learn, or refuse to accept that their dog is in fact a dog and not a furry human, all that money spent, all that time of learning will be for nothing. You cannot send your dog away to learn an entirely new set of rules and behaviors and then return them home to the exact environment and family behavior you started with and expect it to stick.


Training never ends.  Every moment of the day is training.  Learn how to maintain what your dog learned.