Dogma Training - Killarney

My dog Elsa has been attending Dogma since she was a puppy going to daycare and training including their Kinder Pups programme as a puppy, as well as the Reactive Urban K9 programme. Having a rescue dog with behavioural difficulties there are very few people I would trust to take care of her and manage her issues, and the team at Dogma are fantastic. They have all of the dogs' best intentions and well-being in mind, even if that means clients coming less frequently to their business. They also hold fun events giving the opportunity for training and quality time with your dog, especially the Annual Easter Egg Hunt, a scavenger hunt around the city which requires you to work on certain skills and socialization with your dog. I would absolutely recommend Dogma for anyone seeking care and training catered to their dog's needs.

Rewriting this review after we have finished our time with Dogma. We had a few issues with sickness and allergies at the beginning but all was quickly worked out. The staff have been great to deal with and very nice the whole time. We signed up for the Kinderpups package which included daycare, obedience training, and puppy socailization. I think each needs to be reviewed separately.Daycare - I thought the daycare was good for our new puppy for socialization and I believe that the training the staff there did has helped set a good foundation for our puppy going forward. That said I think that it is overpriced and that the 2 months we had there was more than long enough. Also as other reviewers mentioned the requests for extra money for field trips" where a bit much. Especially when the "weather is too bad so we are doing a trip to the grooming center inside the building". Why would I pay extra for you to take me dog to a different room in the building... After we turned down these requests a few times I think they remembered and stopped asking which was nice. In summary if you can afford it and can't stay home all day with your new puppy I think it is beneficial for the first few months.Training - In my opinion the training classes were not good (would NOT recommend) and we ended up canceling halfway through. At the start you MUST have your "report card" which is just a piece of paper that they give you when you signed up or they will threaten to kick you out of the class ( this happened to us and multiple other people) even though they have there clip board with all the info available on who is registered. We only made it halfway though and our paper was not in good shape. If you expect people to bring something like this (and for the price we pay) a small notebook or something else more durable would be nice. Moving on... We found them to be very basic and slow paced. When your puppy has sit down packed and then you spend 30 minutes getting them to sit seemed like a waste of time. And if I have to hear about the stupid spray bottle one more time I'm gonna lose my mind. I thought this was a "term class" where the people are generally the same each class. Repeating the same intro for 5-10 minutes every class seems like a huge waste of time. My last and largest complaint (why we stopped coming) is the "grading" for the last 20 minutes of the class. They have one lead instructor and a number helpers. The lead instructor goes around to 15-20 dogs/people 1 by 1 and grades each dog. In total this takes up about 1/3 of the class. Why this can only be done by the head instructor instead of having multiple people grading and getting it done quickly leaving more time for useful things in the class I do not understand. That said

Kelly is the puppy whisperer! She has been watching our dog since he was a little pup and he always comes home tired and happy. We had to use another sitter/walker when Kelly was out of town and our dog was not the same dog after. She is the only person we will ever trust after that experience. Kelly is also incredibly reliable, which is important in her line of work. Absolutely cannot recommend her enough!!

We love our classes at Dogma! My dog struggles with fear and anxiety. The trainers here have helped her gain confidence. They empower me to have the knowledge and skills to help my dog live a full life.

Although I have known about Dogma for many years, due to my mom's dog being enrolled in KinderPups a few years ago, it wasn't until our own puppy, Juneau, started in school that I really understood how great Dogma is! The socialization aspect and the good habits that Juneau learns from the trainers while in 'school' are invaluable. As working dog parents, it is nice to know that Juneau is getting lots of attention throughout the day and can learn to socialize properly with other dogs her age! We really enjoy the daily report cards that Dogma fills out so we can get updates on how our puppy is doing and what we can work on at home with her. I would highly recommend Dogma Behaviour & Education Centres!

Brought our dog to training classes, the staff seemed very inexperienced with a lot more dogs their then we were told there would be. The facility smells very bad and everything seems to be an upsale. We desided to give Dogma another chance when we found the need for some doggy day care. After already having our dog there for training classes we still needed to put her through a 15 min evaluation for the day care. To our suprise once again we found ourselves dealing with someone who seemed inexperienced, she claimed our dog seemed uncomfortable . All I could do was laugh as any dog rushed through a 15 minute evaluation would be uncomfortable especially a pup who is already shy by nature and it is always very noisy with so many dogs barking non stop.The girl assisting us had no problem trying to up sell us on another training program which is $75 a day! All we wanted was some doggy day care .At the end of it she could not simply tell us if they would take our pup in for the doggy day care or not so we desided to just leave. We presently have our pup in a day care that needed to have our pup for a day as 15 minutes is not a suitable amount of time for a proper assessment but we were just hoping to find something a little closer to home. Dogma seemed to be a place where training new staff was more important then quality dog care , the time Laps between our training classes and the talk about dog care was only a couple months yet we did not recognize any of the staff so I'm seeing a lot of staff change over. Strike two was enough for us.

They were very good in the beginning months of our training (2022). Then it went fast downhill in 2023.For example, we bought a 10 day pass, but our puppy got puppy warts (from Dogma) so he couldn’t attend school for a very long time. We lost the money for multiple days. Our dog didn’t see any other dogs, went to parks or anything like that so we for sure got it from Dogma.This is just 1 thing of many things we weren’t happy with. Overpriced and not good.

We had our young dog attending dogma for 3 months. Everything was going very well until the staff slowly started pushing us to sign up for private training in the last 3 weeks of us sending our pup there.It all started with one staff asking us to come pick our dog up earlier as according to her he was ok in the morning but had a hard time settling in the afternoon". We had changed our work schedule so we could pick him up earlier. After a couple of sessions

I would never recommend this company. This place is a complete money grab. I paid for the assessment with my dog $100. We have a conversation, I let them know she has separation anxiety which is why we are doing this. They said that’s okay, she’s been approved to enroll for doggie school. The first visit, after I purchased a non refundable package of puppy school classes that expire in a month, they tell me she needs additional crate training to be able to attend and that will DOUBLE the price. So now it’s $140 per day of doggie school, that’s more expensive than childcare!! Completely outrageous.Don’t even get me started on their “daily add ons” $15 for a reuseable frozen kong full of peanut butter. Like give me a break!

I am writing this review over 1 year after we finished our puppy training with Dogma because I feel that now I have sufficient experience with other companies as well, I am able to write an impartial and informed review, and it's important to share my experience with other families that are considering training through Dogma 37 St location.We enrolled in the training when our puppy was about 14 weeks old - we found the training to be of low value as it did not teach any of the confidence boosting, agility, socializing or behavioral training techniques, and the training sessions consist in LOTS of talking and very little hands on handling.During the 1.5 hours, there are 4 play sessions of 5 minutes each. We did not find this beneficial for the dogs as they are in a room full of other pups that they can't say hi to, so when they get their 5 minutes of playtime they are overly excited and overwhelmed which can cause fights and unwanted behavior.Their training is treats based which we don't agree with either because we find that it overstimulates the dogs and they do not respond to commands unless there is a treat in the handler's hand. After Dogma, we did another training program with our pup (all done outside which is AMAZING as that's where the real distractions are) and we were thought that we are the biggest reward for our dog and just our pets are more than enough as a treat / reward" for them! It works amazing and now we are not scared that the dog won't come to us at the dog park because we forgot our treats at home!Another big dislike is the fact that the trainers do not give you the time of the day before or after classes! We were not able to approach them with questions that resulted from the training/practice with our pup because they are too busy and they have another class after. They tell people to "send in an email" which to be honest