We appreciate you choosing to book a board & train with NOVA Canine Academy! We look forward to working with your dog and creating a training plan that is tailored to your needs. Here’s what you need to know as we get ready to pick up your dog.
Whats Next?
Below is a schedule of when you can expect to hear from us leading up up your dog’s training
Onboarding Schedule
21 Days Before Training
We will send you our onboarding form. This gives us the opportunity to really understand your dogs behavior and what your goals are for training. We ask that you spend some where between 15 and 25 minutes filling out this form with detail. Why? Your responses allow us to go into day one with a better understanding of your dogs unique behaviors and structure our training plan around the goals that you value most.
You can find this form here. Please do not complete this any earlier than 21 days before your scheduled pickup day.
10 Days Before Training
We will send you our pickup checklist. It includes what to pack, what not to pack, and what to expect out of the session. This helps ensure that pick up day runs smoothly.
Please feel free to read more about pick up in our section below.
3-5 Days Before Training
We will confirm with you the pickup time, your address, and that you have prepared the necessary items on the pick up checklist.
Packing List
What To Pack:
- Your dog (Obviously)
- A flat collar – we do not need a harness, gentle leader or any other type of collar
- Your dog’s food
- Please measure out how much food your dog will eat and add 30% to that amount
- This can be given to us in either a container, back, multiple bags, etc… whatever works best for you
What Not To Pack:
- Your dog’s bed
- Your dog’s crate (unless otherwise noted)
- Your dog’s toys (we have plenty of toys, and to prevent destruction or choking hazards we only use our toys)
- A leash of any sort
- A harness or gentle leader
Best Tips For A Smooth Transition on Pickup Day
#1. Plan for 15mins – 1 hour on pickup day. Ethan normally spends 15 minutes to an hour with you to meet your dog and review the behaviors that you would like to work on when he comes to pick up your dog.
#1. Don’t treat your dog any differently than usual on the days leading up to pick up day. You may want to give your dog more love and affection, but this can lead to additional stress and confusion. That being said, feel free to play with your dog more, stimulate them more, and continue to do fun things with them.
#2. It may be hard, but it’s best to not say bye to your dog when Ethan leaves with your dog. Doing this is only for you, for your dog likely doesn’t understand the words you are saying and, again, can cause unnecessary stress through your dogs transition.
#3. Have fun with your dog! Take your dog to their favorite place, play with them.
#4. Plan on hearing from us every weekday day while your dog is here. We try to send you at least 2-3 videos per week of your dogs progress. Some of these videos may be private links that we will send you, feel free to send these to any friends or family. Other videos will be public videos that will be listed on our YouTube Channel. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube Channel 🙂 It does generally take us a few business days to start sending videos over to you.
#5. Post-Training Booklet. Towards the very end of your dog’s training, we will email you over a training booklet. This will include raw training footage from different training sessions and a daily breakdown of what we did, why we did it, and tips for the rest of your dogs life. Feel free to look back on these anytime.
#6. 2-5 hours on graduation day. Ethan generally spends between 2-5 hours with owners after training. Plan on taking some time out of your day on graduation day for this. It is ideal if everyone who lives in or is regularly in your household is in attendance, at least for part of the session.
Tools & Equipment We Recommend
At the link below, you can view all the training tools we potentially recommend you have for your dogs post-training life. Feel free to ask us any questions regarding these, but we definitely recommend a placeboard to nearly every client.