Foster's Training Center

I took my pup to Fosters for their Basic Obedience training. I’m not a novice dog owner and my dog knew all her basic commands. What I needed was the environment of other dogs and distractions to work on her skills and socialization. When I called into Fosters they said the Basic Obedience class would be good. The class is $150 for 6 weeks. The facility is awesome and large. The people are nice. However, the “training” is very lacking. You are given a hand out at the start of classes, this hand out goes over what you would learn in class. But we never got to much of what was on that handout. I found this class to be a total waste of time and money. When you walk into class the trainer, Frank has seats lined up. Everyone takes a seat with their dog, and for the first two classes we never got out of our seats for more than 5-10 minutes to work with our dogs. Instead we listened to Frank talk about his version of training, grooming or just plain reading out of the hand out that was given. At one point he talked for over 15 minutes on the type of brushes to use on different dog coats. I’m sorry but I thought this was obedience training not grooming 101. Class 3 the group worked for a few minutes and again sat most of the hour, listening to Frank talk and talk and talk... Towards the end of the class Frank’s assistant had a dog come into the middle of the ring to work on leash pulling, one at a time and everyone had to watch. You can’t do that with a class of 14, there just is not enough time and only a handful of people even participated. Class 4 more talking and again watching dogs work on leash pulling one at a time. We did spend about 15 minutes of working with our dog in this class. Class 5 was the only class that we spent most of the time working with our dogs. However, there is no structure, Frank would say try a commend and just let you go. I wish we had some organization, for example everyone walk their dogs at a heal around the ring, stop sit, down etc. Not a mosh posh of everyone all over the place. Class 6 was about 15 minutes of you working with your dog with no direction and the rest of the class was listening to Frank talk about how great the class was and then he gave out graduation certificates. Out of the 6 hours of training that cost $150 you only work with your dogs about 2 hours, the rest of the time is listening to a man talk about nothing that I or many of my classmates found useful. I spoke to several classmates who agreed with me that this course was useless. My dog and I are going to another training facility to continue her training. I assume Fosters is a fine place for boarding. But it’s time for them to revamp their training program with some younger energy and structure.