How many go-home lessons are included?

The count follows the program. Foundation covers the basics, obedience and leash skills, place, stay, recall, impulse control and household manners, and one lesson is enough to hand most of them over. Advanced adds distraction proofing, outings, neutrality and confidence work, skills that depend on you managing difficulty in the real world, so the program builds in a second coaching lesson. Anything beyond the included lessons is private training, priced for your dog after the assessment.

The table puts the board and train counts beside the other ways Dogtown hands training over. Canine Campus, the day-training option where your dog sleeps at home, ends with an end-of-program lesson. Dogtown Academy days include a training session with our trainer, which is coaching for the dog rather than for you. If you are choosing between programs, how many times you are coached yourself is a fair thing to compare.

Extra coaching earns its cost in a few clear situations. A safety skill, such as the recall, leave it or waiting at the door, still fails after two weeks of daily practice at the easy level. Someone who handles the dog every week, a dog walker or a grandparent, missed the lessons. You are about to try a setting that is hard to practice into safely. Or the household itself changes: a move, a new baby, a second dog.

On Cape Ann the hard setting is often a beach. Gloucester's rules allow dogs off leash on Good Harbor on even-numbered days from October 1 to March 31 and on Wingaersheek on odd-numbered days from October 1 to April 30, at the time of writing, and open sand is a big step up from a quiet street. A coached session on long-line recall before that first beach day is a sensible use of extra coaching. If the trouble is fear or reactivity rather than skill, more lessons are the wrong tool; ask about React Less, Relax More.