Holiday travel: boarding with training refreshers for graduates.

A dog comes home from a Gold or Platinum stay with place, a loose leash and door manners. Then Christmas travel puts it in a kennel for a week: no place, no structure, a run full of barking dogs. It comes home wound up, and the family wonders where the training went.

What a refresher stay is

Graduates of our programs can board in the training home, under the same rules they graduated with. Meals on place, waiting at doors, structured walks, crate calm at night, and a daily refresher on whatever has slipped since the go-home session. The dog comes back sharper than it left, and the week away reinforces the training instead of eroding it.

• For graduates of any program, including the puppy bundle
• Same house, same trainers, same place beds
• Photo updates while you are away
• Book early: Christmas, spring break and July 4 fill first

Not a graduate yet

Boarding is a graduate service because a dog that does not know the house needs a program, not a stay. If holiday travel is coming and your dog has never trained with us, a Silver week before you leave is often the right answer: the dog learns the house and the rules, and comes home with a loose leash into the bargain.

What a refresher week works on

Every graduate arrives with a slightly different list. The most common are a recall that has gone soft since the go-home session, a loose leash that now tightens at the sight of another dog, place that holds for two minutes instead of twenty, and a door that opens before the sit. The first day is an assessment of what has slipped; the rest of the stay is a daily refresher on those items, in the house, on the sidewalks around the training home and on a field trip or two. You get the same Monday, Wednesday and Friday updates a program family gets.

• Recall on a long line in the field and at the lake
• Place with duration during the household's real evenings
• The walk, with neutrality to the dogs of the neighborhood
• Door manners with real deliveries, which peak in December

Holiday logistics

The training home takes a limited number of dogs, and the week of Christmas and the week of New Year's are the first to fill, usually by early November. Book as soon as you have flights. Pickup and return are available for $250 if the drive does not fit your departure, and the handover at pickup takes ten minutes: what slipped, what we worked on, and what to practice in the first week home. Food, medications and records travel with the dog, exactly as they did for the original stay.

Written by

Best Dog University Team

Board and train trainers in Cypress, Houston. 16+ years, 900+ dogs. About our team