Dog Training Class Software Built for Cohorts, Not Just Enrollments

A group class is not a per-dog board-and-train stay with a different label. It is a scheduled cohort — Puppy Foundations, Tuesdays at 6 p.m., six weeks, eight seats — with its own capacity, age window, vaccination rules, and roster rhythm.

Tools built for overnight stays treat training as an add-on appointment type. Class-heavy trainers end up in spreadsheets for rosters, separate payment links for tuition, and group texts for schedule changes. Curriculum lives in one place; registrations live in another.

Puppy class is often the cheapest customer-acquisition channel a facility has. Software that owns the class relationship owns the pet record from day one.

• —Cohort catalog: Programs with delivery model Group Class, curriculum skills and homework, publish to materialize dated sessions (including multi-weekday schedules like Tue/Thu)
• —Puppy-specific gating: Min/max age windows at start and configurable vaccination override names — not boarding-style complete-records gates
• —Portal registration + pay-in-full: Owners register and pay through Stripe Connect; seats confirm only when paid, with time-boxed holds on capacity
• —Setup vs operations split: Org admins define and publish cohorts; any staff runs the roster board, session edits, and cancellations with refunds
• —Offsite venue display: Classes that meet at a park or rented hall show the venue to owners while location stays the administrative home for tax and timezone
• —Shared training core: Skill library, homework templates, progress tracking, and owner practice logs carry over from board-and-train — one spine for every delivery model

app.petops.app/admin/training/classes

One row per dog, one column per session. Unmarked sessions stay visibly empty — attendance counts only the rows a person actually marked.

Class capacity is enforced at registration time. Live seats count confirmed registrations plus unexpired payment holds — so two owners cannot checkout into the last seat simultaneously.

Pay-in-full at registration matches how classes are sold everywhere and keeps waitlist promotion clean when a spot opens. Staff cancel with optional full refund on the connected account; the enrollment and invoice stay aligned.

What an owner sees before registering. Credential codes come from the trainer's own profile — Pet Ops stores and shows them; it does not verify them with a certifying body.

A class curriculum is skills and homework assigned to weeks. Pet Ops seeds per-enrollment progress from program templates, supports methodology packs for force-free and balanced workflows, and gives owners a homework-first portal experience after registration.

That matters for puppy programs: the dog that starts class at ten weeks becomes a boarding, grooming, daycare, and advanced-training customer for years. The training module becomes the acquisition engine for every other module.