Do you guarantee board and train results?

A board and train covers one or two weeks of a dog's life. What happens next, in your house and on your street, with your family's timing and rewards, decides whether the skills last. A trainer can control the method, the plan and the hours of practice during the stay. A trainer cannot control a dog's health, its age-related changes or how often the new cues are used once it goes home, so promising the result would mean promising something outside the program.

The professional bodies say the same. The AKC's advice on choosing a board and train is to be wary of anybody who guarantees results, because dogs are individuals and each learns at its own pace. The Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers' earlier standards told certified trainers to refrain from offering promises about the outcome of training and behavior work, and its current code, approved on November 20, 2025, asks them to communicate realistically about training outcomes.

A written promise is worth reading closely, because its conditions decide what it is worth. It may cover free refresher sessions rather than a changed dog. It may hold only if you keep using the program's equipment exactly as shown. It may define success as the dog performing for the trainer on the last day. None of those is dishonest in itself, but each is narrower than the headline, so ask for the full wording before you weigh it.

Put the same questions to every promise: what counts as success, who judges it, how long it lasts after pick-up, and what you must do to keep it valid. If keeping it valid involves a remote or prong collar, the program is not one AVSAB's 2021 position statement would recommend, whatever the promise says. Our page on success rates explains how to measure your own dog instead.