Interesting that this is their first review.
My wife and I brought our 3 month old puppy for their puppy socialization class last Friday. We left before the class was over. If you can imagine how Park Slope parents are with their kids, you can figure out how they are with their puppies.
Although I am fine with people babying their puppies (not really but it's your dog), if the trainer is correcting the human issues, which she wasn't. 3 examples.
1) There was a puppy there that was showing aggression and dominance. (A lot of low toned growling, biting, not nipping, and when taken away was very aggressive towards its owners with biting and growling. The trainer didn't remove that dog from the group and didn't try to correct the owner's handling of the dog. The owners were definitely new owners and had no clue what they were doing. Which is fine but puppy socialization classes are for the owners as much as the puppies.
2) Our puppy is very well socialized. It doesn't have any problems with any dogs or humans, including in this class. Later in the class a very nervous and timid terrier came in. It was hiding under chairs and in the corners with its tail between its legs. My puppy went over to it and tried to play with it, Chased it around and, admittedly, prob tried a little too hard to play with the new puppy (which is how some dogs will react to that kind of energy from another dog). But instead of trying to help the timid, nervous puppy, the trainer took our dog out of the area and proceeded to say "if there is anyone who played with *name of our dog* nicely and wants to have their dog in his area...". Needless to say it wound up being every dog in with our puppy and the timid terrier and an aggressive, very small, puppy by themselves.
3) Our puppy, probably 75% of the time, when playing with other dogs, is the first one to go on its back and show belly. If anyone knows anything about dogs, this is a sign of submission, AND you know that puppies play by nipping and "mouthing". So, he was playing with another puppy, was on his back, and mouth was open (not even nipping at this point). Another dog was on top of him and the owner of that dog was saying "Too much teeth, I'm seeing too much teeth. I can't handle it" and pulls her puppy away from our dog. The trainer, right there, once again doesn't correct the owner's behavior.
Overall, there was a very tense energy in the room. There were too many puppies for the space and the trainer was either overwhelmed, burnt out, or both, which led to the owners being nervous and tense, which led to the puppies feeling and feeding off of that energy. It wasn't a good situation and definitely encouraged the nervous aggressive dogs to be nervous and aggressive.
Lastly, don't call the puppies "your kids" to the owners. This gives the mentally of them being our babies and treating them as human babies. They are puppies and need to be treated as puppies or that's when you get older dogs with aggressive and protective issues.
I gave 2 stars because I like that they are doing this but they need to figure it out. Maybe do it more often so you don't have every puppy in the area going in the one day a month. We go to Wag Club every monday for puppy socialization and it is relaxed and fun for both the puppies and owners. They correct any puppy issues (the actual cause) and teach the owners how to deal with the issues. read more