About Loyal Learners Pet Services

Loyal Learners Pet Services runs the closest thing to a full class program in this part of the Southern Tier. Where most trainers here sell private lessons, this one publishes a weekly timetable with course lengths and prices attached, which makes it the easiest local school to plan around. Classes are small – the site says they typically hold six to eight dog-and-handler teams and run forty-five to fifty minutes a week – and they meet "at a variety of locations to best meet the needs of our clients".

The course ladder

There is a genuine progression rather than a single beginner class. Positive Puppy is a five-week course covering attention, sit, target, recall, leave it, drop it and leash walking, alongside house training and nipping. Mind Your Manners, Level 1 is where the site says most adult dogs start, covering the same basics plus stays with distraction and polite greetings. Controlled and Composed builds impulse control on top of that – stays under heavy distraction, waiting at doors and in vehicles, a reliable real-life leave it. Walking and Greetings is a five-week course aimed squarely at dogs that pull or get overexcited at the sight of people and other dogs, and Come When Called is a four-week recall course.

Training in real places

The one that stands out is Out and About, an eight-week course for dogs that already have the foundations and need to prove them somewhere harder. Rather than meeting at one venue it moves each week – the published schedule has run through parks in Springwater, Dansville and Hemlock, a park in Lakeville, a farm-supply store, a village library parking lot and a restaurant gazebo. For a rural owner whose dog is fine at home and hopeless in town, that is a rare thing to find on a schedule.

Sport, games and daycare

Alongside the pet classes the school runs rally at novice, intermediate and advanced levels, a tricks class working toward AKC trick titles, barn hunt taught by Josh, and weight pull, including an open Weight Pull Try-It day advertised as open to any breed and any experience level. The site is careful to say weight pull is scored on a percentage of the dog's own weight, so it is not restricted to heavy breeds. There is also a Play & Train option: a puppy attends daycare on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday for five consecutive weeks and gets an hour of one-to-one training each day covering the Mind Your Manners curriculum, with written homework emailed home. Boarding is offered separately.

Who runs it and practical notes

The site names Jessica and Josh Griswold as the owners. Jessica describes leaving classroom teaching in 2013 to train dogs full time, graduating from the Karen Pryor Academy in 2015, and opening Loyal Learners after that; she also lists the seminars and workshops she has attended. The KPA credential is self-reported on the site. Classes take a fifty-dollar non-refundable deposit with the balance due in the first week, and the site warns that several roads near the Wayland address are seasonal and closed to vehicles, recommending you navigate to a nearby campground first if you are coming from the Honeoye or Naples side.