All pet parents should have the opportunity to celebrate the human-animal bond through fun and supportive positive reinforcement pet training classes.

Written by: Beverley McKee, CDBC, CPDT-KA

Professional pet training goes beyond addressing unwanted behaviours; it provides an opportunity to build your pet’s confidence, provide essential socialization experiences, provide a fun enrichment alternative to the usual walk around the block, help prevent problem behaviour from developing in the future, and strengthens your human-animal bond. Strong human animal bonds can help deter animal surrenders due to behavioural problems

Reducing the Cost and Increasing the Capacity for Subsidized Rates

Because we feel so strongly about the many benefits of proactive training, in late 2023 Toronto Humane Society’s Public Training and Behaviour Services team evaluated group training and private consultation prices and decided to reduce those prices significantly. Training classes were reduced by approximately 50% of average market value for classes led by a certified animal trainer in order to ensure that cost would not be a barrier to pet parents obtaining evidence-based training from industry expert.

At the same time, we increased our capacity to offer subsidized rates to pet parents experiencing financial hardship and rebuilt our operations model to significantly increase the number of training classes available. We reviewed our class curriculum thoroughly and fine-tuned our offerings to be sure we were meeting the needs of our community through a variety of classes, programmed both during daytime and evening hours to ensure that families who might have work hours outside of the traditional 9:00am to 5:00pm would also have opportunities to enroll.

The Impact

The response was extraordinary. Since reducing our rates we’ve more than doubled our monthly training appointments and families served through the Training and Behaviour Services and Behaviour program, and the numbers continue to grow.

In September of 2023, the program served 80 families for a total of 223 appointments as compared to 178 families for a total of 489 appointments as of February 22, 2024. This is a profound impact. Not only have we been able to serve more families, but the accessible price point has resulted in families being able to book multiple training appointments, whether those are private behaviour consultations or group class appointments. That’s a lot of animals and pet parents growing their bond!

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