PetSmart Dog Training Reviews

PetSmart Group training classes offer obedience training that is appropriate for both adult dog training as well as puppy training.

We tried to find good PetSmart dog training reviews but there weren’t many and we came away with mixed opinions. We decided to give it a try so we took our 6 month old puppy, a Chow/Lab mix, to our local PetSmart dog obedience training class and put them to the test.

You may find there is little difference between the Puppy Class and the Beginner Class. In our case there were five other puppy’s there with their owners so ours was effectively a puppy training class.  They ranged in size from a little Chihuahua to a very skittish mixed breed medium-large dog. Among the dog owners there was an early teen and her parent, a young couple, two lady’s and a thirty something man.

Note that in our Beginner Class there was no real discussion about potty training.

We learned that in the training class, a lot hinges on the PetSmart trainer you get. How much do they care about the dogs training? Are they happy to work with the owners and teach them dog training? Are they a truly professional dog trainer?

PetSmart sends their potential dog trainers to their own PetSmart trainers class to learn the official techniques to use in their PetSmart dog training classes. They use a form of positive reinforcement training, which I feel is an effective and humane way to work with your dog.

Our instructor was friendly and seemed to genuinely want the dogs and their owners to succeed. More than once, however, he commented how he would like to do things differently but “this is how PetSmart requires us to do it.”

This seemed unprofessional to me. Don’t tell me what we can’t have just to build yourself up and don’t put down your employer that we have chosen to work with.

In the six weeks beginner training, we were unable to get to most of the things that were mentioned in the brochure. We all succeeded in getting our dogs to sit on command. Most got their dogs to obey the “down” command.

I hoped that in the 6 weeks, we and our dog would come away with a good set of basic obedience skills. Unfortunately, the “stay” command and anything beyond that was out of reach in the 6 weeks PetSmart class. To go further, we were told we would have to buy the intermediate class.

I was disappointed that most of what the literature seems to indicate would be accomplished in the six weeks of obedience training was not even attempted. The dogs learned to sit on command but would get right back up.

Overall it was not what I expected.