Clean Run - May 2017 - 65
Brenna Fender: How much
do you charge for your
classes and how many
weeks are they?
Denise Thomas: Foundations
for Agility is the first level for
everyone and it lasts 6 weeks
[and costs] $115. All group
classes after that pay $120 for an
8-week course ($15 per week).
What's your student retention percentage from the
beginning levels and up?
At what point do you see
more dropouts?
We start with a 6-week
Foundations for Agility class
that everyone must take
when starting out, regardless of age. We notice that,
since moving into town, we
get a ton of people signing
up for it just as a puppy basic
class because of the positive
methods. We teach all the
self-control work, "it's yer
choice," crate games, shaping, etc. that does not get
taught in our local obedience
classes. So we do get only
about 80% retention from
that class as many say they
are happy and got what they
wanted, but really don't want
to do agility.
If they make it to Foundations 2, we seem to keep
about 60-80% of those. By
the time we get to the fourth
set of their classes (30 weeks
of class), it does really weed
out as people realize how
much work agility is. Reasons cited for not going on
include lack of training time,
dogs have health or attitude
issues not conducive to
agility, people's inability to
run, and family life interferences, but mostly it's their
busy work/family schedules.
Talking new, off-the-street
beginners, I would say we
only have about 25-30% left
after a year. It seems once
they get running sequences
and on the actual equipment,
they are committed and stay,
May 17 | Clean Run
Often we see some of those
"dropouts" come back later
on to continue. We host 34
AKC and USDAA trials a
year at our facility so that
helps keep them motivated
once they get to a more advanced level, knowing that
shows are readily available.
The repeat students have
a retention [rate] of nearly
100% at all levels. We do get
a lot of out-of-town agility
students that come just to do
our foundation program that
we know won't be staying
long term so it's hard factor
those things in.
Do you charge more for
higher level classes? What
about classes with more
experienced instructors?
We actually charge a little
more for foundation classes
because they require far
more office time getting
them settled and more feedback is needed outside of
class from the instructor.
We charge the same class fee
for all instructors.
Do you ever give
discounts? If so, what kind?
Yes, handlers with multiple
dogs signed up during same
session get a $10 per dog discount for the session.
When are class payments
due? What if they are
paid late?
Payment is requested by
the first week of class. We
do not charge a penalty for
late payment. New students
coming into the foundation
class must be paid ahead or
when they get there. Private
lessons either pay for a group
of lessons up front or pay
weekly direct to the instructor. We track payments in
the office and email reminders to students who haven't
paid after the class sessions
start. We do not really have
a problem with students not
paying so [we] have a pretty
easy policy on it.
Do you ever offer a certain number of classes
with a certain number of
weeks
to take them (like four
classes and five weeks
to take them)?
No. We offer a set amount
of weeks that they pay for.
If they miss a class, they can
make it up in another class.
I work hard to keep the class
levels as similar as possible
and we often work skills in
progression over a few consecutive weeks so I like the
students to commit to every
week so they don't get behind. We only take five to six
students in a class so it's best
that they are all there at once.
Do you do online registration for classes? If not, how
do you handle registrations,
particularly for multiple
instructors and communicate the information to
the instructors?
We do not take online registration but hope to be able to
do it in the near future. We
just opened a new training
center right in town and our
training has grown so fast
we are having some growing
pains. We have signed up
around 300 new students in
foundations agility this year
since our move in February.
We have settled on a method
where we respond to any
interested student with a
PDF fill-in form with a class
description on the back.
That form asks general info
about the dog and handler
and most important a grid
to check days and times they
are available. That allows us
to group like students together and then offer them
a class as we get enough for
a class that fits their needs.
Once we get our new website
up and running we will have
that form online to fill in and
send through the website.
Each instructor for a new beginner class gets a sheet with
the students' info. They turn
in the filled-out form with
students' names and contact
info to the office indicating
the number of weeks and the
class dates for our records all
together in one book. This
allows us to have an active
master contact list for group
emails or to contact if an
instructor is sick and has to
cancel. The office tracks payment. Instructors each contact their current students
individually by email to set
up new sessions. It's a simple
system but seems to work
for us.
How do you maintain contact between the training
center and the students?
Emails and phone.
How do you communicate
student absences to
instructors?
Students get instructors
email and contact them
directly
How do you handle classes
cancelled due to weather?
Do the students make them
up? If so, how?
Our training center is 30
blocks from Lake Erie and we
get lots of snow! Many students drive one to two hours
for classes and lessons so we
tend to be kind in the weather
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - May 2017
Contents
Clean Run - May 2017 - Cover1
Clean Run - May 2017 - Cover2
Clean Run - May 2017 - Contents
Clean Run - May 2017 - 4
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