What you are actually buying

People evaluate training against the fortnight. Two thousand five hundred dollars for ten days works out to two hundred and fifty a day, which sounds enormous for a dog.

That is the wrong denominator. The ten days are the manufacturing. What you are buying is the next twelve years.

The thing being bought

A dog you can take places. That is most of it and people underrate it until they have the alternative.

A dog who can be left is a household that can go out to dinner. A dog who walks properly is a walk that gets taken rather than skipped. A dog who can be around other dogs is a hike with friends instead of a solo loop at six in the morning.

Multiply any of those by a decade and the arithmetic changes completely.

Nobody buys training because they want a dog who sits. They buy it because the current version of their life with this animal is smaller than they wanted, and they want it back.

The costs that disappear

Dog walkers at forty dollars a visit, three times a week, for a dog who cannot be left. That is over six thousand a year and it continues indefinitely.

Damage. Doors, frames, carpet, blinds, one sofa.

Vet bills from things a trained dog does not do. Eating something on a trail. A fight. A road.

Boarding kennels that charge more, or decline, dogs they cannot handle.

And the ones with no invoice. Holidays not taken. A house nobody can visit. Two people quietly negotiating whose turn it is to deal with the dog.

What it does not buy

Being honest about the limits is the only way any of the above means anything.

It does not buy a finished dog. Adolescence still happens. Six months still happens.

It does not buy an exemption from doing anything. If nothing is maintained it decays, the same as it would for you with a language.

And it does not buy a different dog. A genetically nervous dog stays a nervous dog who copes better. Anyone promising otherwise is describing something that does not exist.

When it is not worth it

If your dog is basically fine and you want to tighten a few things, it is not worth it. Go and do a good group class for a hundred and fifty dollars and keep the rest.

If you cannot do the handover sessions, it is not worth it yet. Wait until you can.

If the problem is one specific thing with a management solution, buy the management solution. A gate is thirty dollars.

I turn down work for all three of those reasons and I would rather do that than take money for something that is not going to hold.

How to decide

Not on the day rate. On this question.

What are you currently not doing because of the dog, and what would it be worth to be doing it again in a month?

For plenty of people the honest answer is nothing much, and they should not buy a programme. For the ones who can list four things immediately, the number stops being the difficult part of the decision.

Run the six checks before you decide either way. They are free and they will tell you which of those two people you are.