BBC Maestro Online Video Course | Let The Greatest Be Your

NOT JUST FOR PUPPIES. This course covers different ages and situations. You stream the video content, it is not downloadable. According to the website FAQs, you can access the course for life.

I haven’t done the full course yet, I have skimmed it and been practicing along the way as well. It’s a course to engage in over some time. But I also need to review it as a whole hence the below views:

What I would say, is this is a great course for beginners and those even considering getting a dog to understand what training you can do, and expectations to have – with some good very general equipment advice included. It does come with course note downloads as well, so it is quite a well-rounded course. It’s a handy adjunct for perhaps more experienced owners as it’s way, way too easy to let the discipline go. Sometimes a new exercise can bring some spark back for your hound as well.

Dogs get bored too remember! And they don’t have the digital age to keep them occupied.

I have been around dogs and dog trainers for a few years shall we say – seeing different methods, and more often than not ending up confused. I do not wish to put people off this course as it’s decent – but, reviewing it, it definitely has irritations.

This course is quite clear – it’s got some good basic information and exercises to do – the part about choosing your breed carefully, and working WITH that breed’s natural dispositions is excellent. I have learned some stuff, unquestionably.

Whereof course it does stack up is it’s better than jumping from trainer to trainer and getting confused by different methodologies.

But there are parts of this course that irritate me, and honestly, wouldn’t have got past me if I was editing:

20 odd second intros for every video? Really? Some of them are a few minutes long. These are bite-sized lessons, not a TV series.
And it leaves the summary up at the end for a while – not unhelpful, but that 4 hours starts to look a little questionable to me.
My biggest gripe is some (not all) of the lessons only show you what to do at a basic level, give instructions to move it up a notch but you don’t see it being done. Again, REALLY? It makes a lot of this look simple, which it is in theory, but give a stressed-out puppy owner these videos with challenging behaviours or stubbornness. Let’s see the exercises done with dogs like that, rather than some of them on here that look already trained.

Those criticisms might be unfair, and I still think it’s an excellent course – and will give you consistency in your method. I just think, when charging 80 when there’s so much info out there for free (which can do more harm than good, as mentioned), then are you really going to attract the buyers you want?

Whereas, if you’d tightened this course up a bit and made it feel a bit more like everyday life with a new puppy or rescue etc (ie, WHAT HAVE I DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE, until they snuggle up and remind you how cute they are again) – and showed a bit more of those behaviours, then I feel it would have been more helpful and would have probably been very popular.

Talking of viewing: I am watching it on the Maestro page on a laptop. I think they work well on a phone as well. You register an account and your courses are stored there for a time – I think 5 years I read somewhere but I cannot find that information again.

The package is nice with the orange envelope, the way it opens out feels of quality (see photo) and a bit better than your standard gift card. Can’t fault that.

As it is – it’s a four-star course, with lots to value about it. A bit more depth and it would have been an easy five stars. Still enjoying it!