Hmm. That's good to know. I haven't taken any group classes with him because he really won't focus in close proximity to other dogs (yet). I KNOW a lot of stuff like "Look At That" and "It's Yer Choice" would help him, but I'm really struggling with bridging the gap between know what the process is and doing it with a real live dog. I end up just sort of doing some stuff here and there so I was hoping have it in a class/program format would help me be more consistent and varied.
If you can commit to following the program, even when the exercises seem simple and boring, I think you will probably get something out of it. The other people in the class said they loved it though I didn't see much evidence in the gold videos that the dogs had come a long way.
I'm sure if I had really done it step by step I would have taken more away too, but going at it more casually it was boring and kind of obvious. Not even many games to play, just a lot of "click and treat for eye contact, click and treat for longer eye contact, then ask for a behavior before you click and treat". The gold dogs in my class were mostly kind of shut down/nervous or reactive. The only one that was confident and more interested in exploring the environment, like Watson, was the puppy and of course she was young and spazzy so I didn't get to see how it worked with an adult dog similar to Watson.
Maybe it's just one of those foundation things that you have to do even if it's boring, though I feel like I've done a ton of that stuff already in Watson's life. I want to sign up for the Focus Games class when that comes out because I think that will be more engaging