Originally Posted by
smartrock
I haven't used one of these programs but I've spoken to others who have and found it to be a good experience. My thinking is you want your dog to be obedient with YOU and being obedient to you should involve you being involved in the training and developing your relationship with the dog. I suspect these training programs, though, are much more consistent about training than your average dog owner is, so mine would probably be more well behaved if I actually had sent them for training, rather than me letting their mistakes slide. As long as there is a good system of transferring that training to you, not just handing you the lead at the end of the training period and sending you off with your pup, maybe it would be OK.
Will Chutes be a hunting dog? I guess if you're going to hunt with him and have never trained a hunting dog before, I might send them for that sort of training but probably not your everyday dog sort of training. You can probably find a good kennel without doing the training, too.