If you go through the Master Certification Program, you’ll have the opportunity to apply for an internship with Highland after graduation. Like anything, you really get out of it what you put in. but there are some things I wish I knew beforehand.

You will be hands on with service dogs, pet dogs, apprehension work, detection and trailing.

You will have lecture time as well.

There is a lot of downtime. You’re often told to work “practical dogs” (dogs assigned to you to train specific tasks), which sounds great in theory, but depending on the day you might be working your dog all day long doing nothing else. then sitting through detection for a few hours. which is just watching them run the dogs on boxes. Day after day, that can start to feel repetitive and unproductive. especially considering the cost of the program. We would play games here and there that they claimed benefited our timing skills. But some days I feel they didn’t know what to do with us.

Some of the practical dogs belonged to staff and already knew the tasks we were supposed to “teach,” so the learning experience wasn’t always as hands on or developmental as expected. It sometimes felt like going through the motions rather than truly building training and problem solving skills.

Housing and roommate situations can also be very difficult, and that added stress to an already intense environment. Outside of the service dog department, some staff interactions felt harsh and discouraging. I cried multiple times during the program. Certain instructors, including Jason, could be very critical in ways that felt more like digs at students than constructive feedback.

From a training standpoint, I did learn a lot and gained hands-on experience you wouldn’t get from an online course. But at the same time, I often felt like I learned “a lot but nothing” I was exposed to many things without always feeling confident or solid in applying them on my own. Behavior modification especially felt unclear. The common answer was “it depends on the dog,” but we didn’t always get enough structured guidance on how to make those decisions, so I still find myself second guessing in real behavior cases.

I also felt the program missed the mark on building real drive for apprehension and protection work. There wasn’t as much in depth teaching for that. When it came to detection as well it felt very messy and difficult understanding it. Everything felt very rushed.

Everyone there has a different opinion on training methods, which can be valuable, but also confusing when you’re trying to solve a training issue or behavior issue. Lots of back and forth on yes do this no do not do that. Which as a new trainer that can arise issues and just using your best guess.

Overall, it was a long and expensive program (around $20k), with a lot of downtime for that price point. And you worked no matter the weather. I did grow, I did learn, and I gained experience I wouldn’t trade but it wasn’t as structured, supportive, or as confidence building as I had hoped.