Do you think more people should participate in the GDCS?

So the KC have the Good Dog Citizen Scheme....

Do you think more people with dogs/puppies should join and take part, and then (in theory) more dogs in the UK will be better behaved?

Do you think if more people took part, prograssing up the ladder etc you would see less DA, more "well adjusted dogs"?

Or do the KC need to change the critera for the awards?

Many of my friends who have taken puppy/bronze/silver GDCS said it set their pups/rescues to go onto further things - search and rescue dogs, agility, flyball for instance.

i enjoyed doing the good citizen with my dogs one has reached gold and one silver. like you said mine have progressed to agility and rally. the only fault i feel with the good citizen is my dogs were brilliant at there classes but its not real life situations.my dogs can both be da and this is not due to lack of training as there done many other courses as well as the good citizen.so i think my anwser would be it may help towards people having better adjusted dogs but some dogs like mine need real life situations to help there behaviour which im glad to report is slowly improving

I don't believe it has anything to with either
the criteria of the scheme or the fact that's it's a KC scheme -I believe it's solely down to the laziness of and their lack of commitment to their dogs (it was this that I was alluding to in a recent thread "How can we encourange owners to train their dogs ?")

Myself, I went to an APDT class trainer - the classes had nothing to do with the KCGCS at all. I'm often (really !!!) complimented on the behaviour of my dogs and asked if I'm a professional dog trainer.

Other owners frequently say "I wish mine behaved like that" or "Can you train mine like that" to which I offer them details of the trainer and her classes. The responses vary from "I don't have time for that" - It's one hour, in an evening, one day a week - to "Oh I've tried that but my dog got bored".

I like to think that it wasn't the trainer that trained my dogs, but that I did. I was taught how to train my dogs, and after each lesson I'd spend the following week practicing what we'd been taught on the Mon night. I've heard many people speak in negative terms about the trainer I used - they seem to expect to be able to walk into the class, then walk out one hour later with a fully trained dog without having to put in any time or effort themselves until the next lesson - they're often the owners with dogs condemned to living their lives on lead and moaning that their dogs won't behave even though they've "tried everything."

In answer to your question - I think more people should take their dogs to class, whether it be KCGCS or not.

I wish I could afford it. The dog training classes around here range from £10 - £25 per week with 6 weeks being paid in advance. From a teaching point of view I can full understand this and the need to keep memberships and ensure people attend etc. But it's an added expense I just can't afford currently sadly.

All training is good training.

The GCDS is a good scheme that works the dog and handler progressively through basic training in a systematic way. That has to be good.

Yes, I do think if more dogs worked through schemes like these, we would see better behaved dogs and more confident owners

It's a good scheme, but standards vary considerably from club to club.
Also some tests (examiners) are far more rigorous than others.

I know of several Dogs with the Gold award, which have terrible,recall, manners with other Dogs & walk terribly on the lead when out of the classroom situation.

Most clubs I`ve been to have their own system of goals and awards.

No tbh I think people should take responsibility for their dogs and if they can't, they shouldn't get one in the first place. You can achieve having a well behaved, well trained dog without attending any training course at all, it's not exactly rocket science.

Unfortunately, people aren't born knowing how to train and handle a dog. Most muddle through and learn as they go along and get better and better along the way. However, it most certainly can do no harm to learn from the experience of others especially when it benefits both owner and dog

I didn't say it would do any harm, but a lot of trainers are not particularly good and the original question was about whether or not we should all take the kc good citizens course therefore resulting in better behaved dogs and my answer is still no.