Tails-U-Win

Tails U Win is positive reinforcement only which drew me to them. I was looking for a place to teach me and my pup (both extremely familiar with clicker training) to learn agility and the woman at the desk placed us in Family Dog 2 to start. I liked our main instructor as she had helpful tips to get us through some road blocks but didn’t find the other as personable or knowledgeable. Many of our interactions were with the latter. What really bothered me was how random each class seemed. We would do new things every week but there was no explanation of how/if these things were building on each other, the end goal, etc. It was “do this” with a little bit of feedback and then, ok see you next week. Fortunately, I mainly wanted the exposure to the new environment and working around brand new dogs so we hung on for a while. Around class 5 we used shaping to teach our dogs how to get into a box. We did this for an hour straight with no other exercise or instruction except for maybe the last 10 minutes where we finally did a little bit of hind end awareness. My dog figured out what I was shaping her to do within the first 10-15 minutes or so, so I added a cue and that was that. We were left to ask her to stand in a box repeatedly for 30-40 minutes. Some of the dogs got to experiment with skateboards but there were only 2 and probably 5-6 dogs that needed the medium/large size so… we just never got a skateboard. After that class I was so frustrated and bored with the seemingly random content we stopped going to class and I went back to training on our own until I find a better fit. Maybe it just wasn’t the right instructor for us but a little more context and organization would have done wonders.

We had the opportunity to meet with the Owner to have our first Consult. Learned quite a bit about our pup and ourselves. Puppy Kindergarten Classes were fun and informative but our instructor was a bit of a stickler about how she wanted things done. When inquiring minds asked it was a repeat of the same with no explanation as to why we did it that way. Not even after class. Then when we moved on to Famuly Dog II we had a different instructor who explained the reasoning why. However, she gave no homework nor followed any "flight plan". Each class was a surprise. Fun. Entertaining. We learned one's pup must master Family II twice before moving on to other courses. We need some guidance on a few things so we may opt for some personal training for our pup. So far we have been happy with what they have offered.