Will my dog bond with the trainer instead of me?

What changes during a stay is narrow. Your dog learns to work with one more person, and its cues become tied to that person's voice, timing and posture, which is why it may answer the trainer faster at pick-up. What does not change is everything outside the training floor: months or years of shared history, your house, your car, your walking routes, the smell of your kitchen. A week or two adds a chapter to your dog's life; it does not rewrite the book.

Liking a trainer takes nothing away from you. A dog can look forward to a handler at work and still pull toward your car in the parking lot. The program is built on that assumption: it ends by moving every cue back into your hands, with one go-home lesson after the one-week Foundation program and two scheduled coaching lessons after the two-week Advanced. Our page on whether a dog forgets its family during a stay covers the attachment research in more depth.

Bonds are built from shared routine, so for the first fortnight put yourself in charge of the moments your dog values most. Serve every meal, with one cue from the lesson before the bowl goes down. Hold the leash on walks, on routes your dog already knows. Run the game it loves best, and do two short training sessions a day with the trainer's exact words and rewards. None of this is about competing with the trainer; it is about the cues meaning the same thing in your hands.

Hold back on handing the dog to new walkers or sitters for those two weeks if you can, and let other family members join in with the same cues. Later, a long-line recall at Good Harbor Beach on an even-numbered day between October 1 and March 31 makes a good test of how the partnership is going. If you want trainer time to continue, Dogtown Academy days are $89 full or $69 half, and the Pup Van collects from Rockport, Gloucester, Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea for $10 each way.