Canine Campus

We adopted our 2-​year-​old dog about 6 months ago, and she came to us not housebroken at all, having never lived indoors in a home (only crated and kennelled), terrified of stairs and hardwood floors, quite scared of the sounds of the city (cars and trucks on the road, etc.) and quite reactive to other dogs.
Having worked on all these issues to the point where she’s most of the way there with housebreaking, manages most slippery flooring, handles most stairs unless they’re in a completely new place, and is learning to mostly just ignore other dogs and pay attention to us, we thought we were ready to try out an obedience class. Our goal was mostly to have some fun and have her learn some new behaviours. This class was certainly not fun… in fact, it was quite stressful.
Positive experiences:
— large space, which is separated into two spaces so that an over-​stimulated dog can be taken aside to calm down
— a second trainer in the room to help everyone get attention, even in a class full of dogs.
Negative experiences:
— we were placed into the Manners II class, even though our dog had never been to an obedience class before, and we had adopted her less than 6 months ago. She had learnt to sit about 4 weeks ago, didn’t know lie down/​stay/​leave it/​heel when we started the class.
— we were asked to start fading food rewards, even though we felt our dog was in in over her head at this class.
— we were paired off to work beside a dog who had snapped/​snarled twice at another dog, even though the instructor knew that our dog had a history of dog reactivity
— when that dog snapped and snarled at our dog, we were told that we should have been quicker to remove our dog… basically, when our dog was on the receiving end of aggression, we were the ones who were chastised.
— we asked to switch to a lower level class (Manners I, instead of Manners II), and we were told that we would have to wait until there was a spot free after all the paying customers had enrolled unless we were willing to pay a $ 74 switching fee in advance.
This was all very surprising, given that everyone else seems to have had a fairly positive time. We will definitely not be coming back, and we will relay our experiences to our adoption group.

Came to Canine Campus after having a bad experience with a home run dog training business.
Communication was good, the classes were great.
We liked it a lot more when Lucinda herself was running the classes, as we can feel she knows her way with dogs.
Lucinda was professional throughout, couldn’t really ask for any different.
Group activity was great, classes were always filled, which allowed our dog to socialize with other dogs.

I would absolutely and highly recommend Canine Campus! I have had great success with my pug and she is a lot more well-​behaved than she used to be and knows so many more basic commands. She still has issues to work on but obviously, training is a life-​time process.
I would really recommend taking more than one course as consistency is key with any dog-​training.
Lucinda, the owner, is extremely professional and gives very very useful, responsible, and practical tips to dog owners. She is extremely qualified and good at what she does. She has both EXPERIENCE (over 25 years of experience in dog training!) and EDUCATION (currently completing a Masters degree in animal behaviour) so she really knows her stuff! Training is also pretty much her full time job so she’s 100% committed to making your pooch become your best friend!
Lucinda offers both group classes and private and/​or at-​home consultations.

Our family got a new little guy, cockapoo (not pictured), and our vet recommended canine campus for training. Our first dog never got trained and only knew minimum basics of sit and paw. So we wanted our new pup to start early and socialize at ⁵⁄₆ months old. Class was perfect for a bit of socializing work and learning commands. Our instructor was Arlene and she gave useful tips and commands that were necessary for pups that age. However, some weeks not only did my parents (who took the dog to training on occassion) and I got a little distracted or bored… but so did our pup. Things that we had honed at home with the dog were repeated too much during class and we attended class hoping to practice previous commands and ‘show off’ our progress but also continuously learn new ones. Great puppy socializing but we didn’t come out feeling like we had enough training techniques rather than just commands to teach.

I highly recommend Canine Campus to any of my friends with dogs or to people we meet on the street in search of training. The owner Lucinda is really excellent with all types of dogs. Bonnie (our poodle) is a transformed dog after our work at Canine Campus. We went through puppy kindergarten at CC, which really helped with Bonnie’s shyness around certain types of dogs and the subsequent levels of training really helped build up Bonnie’s sense of security, agility and her working relationship with both myself and my wife. We have done four different courses there and my wife and I are very happy with the results. Bonnie gives it two paws up!