11 reasons Why I’m now sold on virtual classes

I used to be one of the people who would avoid virtual classes at all costs and opt for in-person learning.  I paid thousands of dollars every year to travel across North America to do in-person workshops & also paid extra for working spots because I didn’t think I could possibly grasp everything I needed without actually DOING the exercises in-person with my own dogs and getting real-time feedback from my instructor(s).  While my dogs actually handle travel & living in a hotel extremely well, they still don’t decompress as well between training sessions in a hotel room as they do being able to hike offleash and sleep in their own bed at home.  If I’m being honest, neither do I.

Here’s what has happened during COVID and what being given no options except (**notice I didn’t say forced?) to be both a student AND a teacher of virtual classes & conferences has taught me:

1. Dogs & their handlers do better learning foundations at home without distractions unless they already have the skills to be able to handle those distractions (this includes the distraction of the instructor entering the home for private sessions).  This should not be surprising considering we as trainers have always preached: teach new skills in the lowest distraction setting possible.  This is especially true for fearful, reactive and excitable dogs.  As a trainer, I am better able to see the dynamic between the dog and its handler when the dog isn’t distracted by me.
2.  (Related to 1) As a teacher, I love having time to teach leash-work in an environment where the puppy isn’t already straining at the end of the leash to check things out/getting frustrated and in turn making their owners frustrated.  We can lay the foundations more easily and gradually build distractions at a pace that sets both the dog and the handler up for success.
3. Puppies tummies are often more sensitive to using higher value treats and we get away with using far less of them when we’re learning from home because we are not competing with distractions - learning from home allows us to get our puppies to work more for the kibble their tummies are already used to.  This means I get less reports of dogs throwing up or having diarrhea after puppy class.
4. Car sickness is also more prevalent in young puppies and that is a non-issue with virtual classes.  If you’ve ever worked a puppy who is stressed out and got sick because of the car-ride on the way to class, you can probably agree you would much rather be able to learn at home and work on the car-sickness separately.
5.  Video recording is SUCH a valuable tool for both the student and the teacher to have.  Being able to watch recorded sessions of people (including myself) and replay them allow me to pinpoint the second a dog starts to get confused and where we need to adjust our training plan to set our dogs up for success.  It is also incredibly useful to be able to look at progress session by session when they are recorded. 
6.  It has challenged me as as trainer to give better explanations since I don’t get to cheat and get the dog doing a behaviour and then hand the leash back to the owner and ask them to repeat what I did.  This has absolutely made me a better trainer and for that I am truly grateful.
7.  As a student, I’m often able to fix many issues on my own because I can tell by replaying my own videos where things are going wrong.   This has translated to much cleaner training and therefore better success in my training with my own dogs.  
8.  As a student, it’s easier to pay attention to and process the material being presented when I’m not trying to split my attention between the instructor and keeping my dog calm & focussed in their workspace in a distracting environment.   I can’t even imagine trying to juggle this AND kids in a class setting - I know I said this many times before we could only do online classes, but the parents who manage puppies AND kids in in-person classes deserve a super mom/dad award!! 
9.  Socialization can be worked on separately, and it actually makes good sense to do so until they have learned to work around distractions.  Sometimes puppies make a very strong association with a space that is used for play and it becomes increasingly difficult to get them to work in that space if they play there week after week without having already learned how to choose their handler over distractions.  I noticed this especially when I worked in a pet store where people had done playgroups for weeks prior to doing training sessions in the same space.  The social skills gained by puppies who came for daycare and/or imprinting which were learned from interacting with my older dogs has been superior to the social skills learned in a 15 minute segment of socialization with other puppies included in a puppy class.
10.  (Related to 9): A lot of socialization should be learning to observe and NOT get to interact with things they see.  Getting your dog out for gradual exposure to new people/dogs without having them interact is valuable and necessary socialization.  Socialization in a controlled environment to work on interactions with new dogs/people is still recommended for puppies under 16 weeks but should NOT by any means be a puppy’s only form of socialization.
11. Accessibility: Not every puppy owner has a car to attend classes and classes aren’t always accessible by transit.  Virtual learning has opened up the doors to people who live further away or local people who for whatever reason cannot attend in person classes.  Live classes can also be recorded, eliminating scheduling issues that a lot of busy families face.

**If someone had tried to force me to do virtual classes before COVID, I would have either politely declined/opted out OR I would have done it and likely gone into it being prepared not to like it - because that’s how most individuals respond to being forced to do something.  Having my environment set up to be left with no other options but to choose to do virtual classes myself put me in a position to enter the stage with a much more open mind and be more receptive to the process.  Say hello to the importance of force-free learning :)

Disclaimer:  Once foundations are laid, it absolutely makes sense to move to in-person lessons to build on those foundations and practise in a controlled setting where we can build our behaviours with distractions in a controlled setting.  I am not suggesting there is no value to in-person learning at all, nor am I suggesting that you cannot successfully teach foundations in-person.