I went through petsmart training classes, and they are OK. The trainer does a good job of giving the basics of how to train a dog, no more and no less. The thing with PetSmart though, is that the trainer has to abide by how the PetSmart company wants her to train dogs. This is great in a sense, as they focus on positive reinforcement, but for my dog, the way they wanted me to train Recall does not work for my dog, and the trainer is not allowed to give me any other suggestions, so it becomes a little bit problematic because not all dogs will learn the same!
Furthermore, the trainer's do love dogs, and that's great, but they also purposely get your dog excited, so that your dog is happy when it goes to training, but this becomes an issue because now my dog is too excitedly overwhelmed when we go to class to completely focus on me, because the trainer has heightened her excitement and encouraged that behaviour so many times.
Now with all this said, PetSmart has absolutely helped me strengthen my bond with my dog and helped me to train her into the best dog that she can be, but there is always room for improvement! read more