A full puppy class,
and the waiting list in WhatsApp.

Thursday, quarter to eight. The eight o'clock puppy class has been full for weeks. An owner messages that her pup is ill and won't make the next two evenings. You have a waiting list, somewhere, in the same group chat where this afternoon's question about a tick collar is still unanswered. Who was at the top again?

That searching doesn't cost you customers. It costs you evenings. And now and then a seat that stays empty because you checked the waiting list just too late.

The admin of a dog training school looks like that of any training provider, but it's just different enough that most booking systems keep rubbing against it. Below, part by part: where it chafes and how you fix it.

A dog training school doesn't think in single lessons

A puppy class isn't a single appointment. It's a series of six or eight evenings that someone signs up for in one go. Most software thinks in single appointments. So you put every participant into a diary eight separate times, or you keep it in a notebook and count by hand at the end who attended enough evenings for a diploma.

A block should be one unit. In Trainiq you turn a puppy class or obedience course into one course, with a session for every evening. The owner books once and is in the whole series straight away. The system records attendance per evening, and you set a price and a maximum number of dogs per block.

The waiting list that moves itself along

The Netherlands has about 1.9 million registered dogs, half a million more than before 2019. Most dog training schools notice it in their waiting list. A popular puppy class is often full months ahead.

When a block is full, the next registration gets a waiting-list form instead of a “full” message. When someone cancels, the person at the top of the list automatically gets an e-mail with a direct booking link that's valid for 48 hours. No response, and the seat moves on to the next one.

This is the part that almost always goes wrong once when you do it by hand. Not because you can't, but because a cancellation comes in at quarter to eight while you have a group of dogs in front of you. By the time you scroll back through the group chat, the evening is over and the seat stayed empty.

Paying at registration

Registering and paying happens in one go online. No separate payment requests afterwards, no list of who still owes you that you go through again every week.

It also cuts no-shows. People who have paid in advance turn up more often. Not always, a sick pup stays at home, but the non-committal “I'll see if it suits me” sign-up largely disappears.

Diplomas after the last evening

After the last lesson the system creates the diploma, with the dog's name on it, and e-mails it to the owner. No pile of certificates to fill in by hand on a Sunday evening, no names copied wrongly from an attendance sheet.

One record for owner and dog

Each participant shows the owner with the dog, the contact details, which block they're in, whether they've paid and which evenings they attended. When a new season starts, you open the next block and send your regular customers one message that registration is open. The people who did the puppy class last year are the ones you want back for the follow-up course the year after.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't train your dogs, and it doesn't choose how you split your blocks. Whether your puppy class runs on Thursday or Saturday morning, how many dogs fit in a group on your field: you know that better than a system does. Those choices stay yours.

And if you have one group of ten regulars who come every week, a notebook is probably faster. It starts to pay off around the point where you run several blocks at once and your waiting list gets longer than your group. From there on, you win back every week the evening you used to lose to bookkeeping.

Want to see more of what this looks like for a dog training school? Read the page on dog training school software, or request a demo via trainiq.nl.