How long will it take to train my dog?

Deuce's file is where the only numbers live. A ten-month-old Rottweiler doing ordinary adolescent things at ninety-six pounds, and his handler stops mid-session to answer the question owners ask first: one to three sessions per command for most dogs, four for a tough one, about four on average for a Rottweiler - which is given as the reason the heel gets drilled as hard as it does. The worked example attached is a Labrador who knew the commands and fought the handler, took about four sessions on the down, and went home as a service dog. The same session gives the other half of the arithmetic: three sessions in a day, so a bad one costs nothing, and a day missed gets picked up at a weekend because the dog is owed the whole program.

Dolce is the cleanest statement of the split, because her program has both halves in it and they are running months apart. She is a Rottweiler in a protection program whose obedience ran ahead of her confidence - off leash in public by mid-July and still losing the sleeve in September - because her bite and chase play were suppressed as a puppy and reopening it is the actual project. So in the first owner lesson the trainer gives a date for the obedience and proofing and refuses one for the chasing and the bite, in one sentence, with the reason attached. The breed note in the same session is a timetable note too: Rottweilers are described as slower than Belgians to want the fight part.

Kodak supplies the magnitude. A flight risk who did not trust his handler at all, worked on a long walk that is narrated almost the whole way through, and at the end of it the trainer refuses to let the walk stand as the result: it is a microcosm, a small example, and what produces the change is twenty to fifty of them stacked. Earlier in the same walk he says out loud, in a video an owner will watch before buying anything, that a case like this needs a lot of patience and a lot of time.

Finn is the case where the date moved. A major flight risk whose whole program rests on the recall; at the planned go-home, Kelton describes having added sessions past the date because he could see the dog reaching off leash, and he names the thing he weighed it against out loud - the family wanted him home. This is the clearest picture in the corpus of how the length of a program is actually decided: not by a schedule, but by whether the ceiling is still moving, with the family's patience on the other side of the scale.

Luna is the extension, asked for and granted. A nervous case typed on day one as environmental rather than genetic; four weeks in, the nerves came back and the program asked the family for another week. The trainer announces it to them through the camera without softening it, gives the reason - a real chance the off-leash would not be as reliable as they would want - and says plainly that an extra week is not always given. He also gives the countervailing pressure, which is rare: programs cannot simply run long, because the kennel is finite and dogs need room. Being behind gets made up with his own weekend rather than with the client's time.

Bullet gives the bookkeeping rule. He arrived completely green - the word on day one is zero - and on his exposure trip the trainer stops to explain how the videos will be numbered from then on: by days of training done, not by days in the building, with several sessions in one day counting as one. It is the single most useful sentence in the corpus for reading the videos in order, and it is worth knowing that the convention was abandoned: six uploads carry a day number and all six are from the first six days.

Zeus is where the front of a program is described honestly. A full-grown Cane Corso behavioural case - he tried to bite two people's hands on arrival - and the update video tells the family that the first two or three days of every program are settling rather than training, because training a dog who has just landed in a new place would not be fair to him. The admission attached is the useful part: this is also why there is nothing to report from those days. The same video adds the two other things that quietly eat a schedule - a case with a secondary step before training can start at all, and heat, which he says can cut an outdoor session to about ten minutes.

How many sessions does one command take?

One to three for most dogs, and four if the command is a hard one for that particular dog. The figure is per command rather than per dog, and it comes with a worked example rather than as an assertion: a Labrador who already knew the commands but fought the handler took about four sessions on the down. The same trainer puts a Rottweiler at about four on average, and says that is why the heel gets drilled as hard as it does with a dog like that. Treat it as one experienced handler's own count, not a published standard - nobody on film says where the number came from.

Why will nobody tell me when my dog will be confident?

Because confidence does not run on repetitions and the trainers will not pretend it does. Dolce's lesson is the clearest example: the obedience and proofing get a date - about next week - and the chase and bite work get a progress report instead, because that part is based on her confidence. It is worth hearing what that refusal actually is. It is not hedging; it is the trainer declining to sell you a date he cannot hold, in the same breath as one he can.

Is a fearful dog going to take longer?

Yes, and it is said plainly in a video made for owners rather than in a sales conversation. A case like that is described as needing a lot of patience and a lot of time involvement. The magnitude claim in the same session applies twice over to a fearful dog, because the thing being built is not a command at all: the result comes from stacking twenty to fifty sessions, and every one of them has to hold the dog under his threshold.

My dog has been there a week and I have not seen anything. Is that normal?

For the first two or three days, yes, and it is a stated policy rather than a backlog. Those days are for the dog to get used to where he is, on the grounds that training him then would not be fair - and the trainer says out loud that this is also the reason there is nothing to show from them. Two other things eat time and are named on camera: a case with a behavioural problem may have a step before training can begin at all, and heat cuts outdoor work to about ten minutes on a bad day.

What happens if a day gets missed?

It gets made up, and the reason given is a rule about what the dog is owed rather than a favour to the client. The same session explains why three sessions get run in a day: if one goes badly there are two behind it, so a bad session is not a lost one.

Could the program run longer than we agreed?

It can, and in this corpus it has - twice, for two different reasons. Finn's stay was extended because the trainer could see off leash was reachable and said so, while naming that the family wanted him home. Luna's was extended by a week that her family agreed to, because her nerves came back and the off-leash recall would otherwise not have been reliable enough to send home. The same trainer is careful to say the extra week is not always given, and the reason is not reluctance: the kennel is finite and dogs need room.

Expecting one session to change a dog. The trainers' own answer is that a single walk is a scale model of the result, not the result.

Counting the program in days away from home. The business counts days of training done, and several sessions in one day are still one day - so the two numbers will not match and the difference is not lost time.

Reading a quiet first week as a program that has not started. The first two or three days are settling on purpose, and that is also why there is nothing to report from them.

Asking for a completion date on the part of the work that is emotional. The trainer who is being honest will refuse, and a trainer who gives you one is promising something repetitions cannot deliver.

You have been given a finish date for everything at once, including the part of the problem that is about how your dog feels.

You are counting the weeks your dog has been away rather than the sessions he has had.

Your dog is nervous or fearful rather than merely untrained, and you are budgeting the same amount of time a friend's obedience program took.

Your dog's programme has a behavioural problem in front of the obedience - he cannot be handled, or crated, or approached - so the first stretch will not look like training at all.