Ok this is my opinion, and just an opinion. What is so bad about treats? Especially with a puppy! If Malone is *hating* the training sessions, there is something wrong! With my puppy class we used tons of treats, and always made training fun. You can't make the sessions too long, and you should always have a bit of play afterwards. Malone should enjoy training, and enjoy pleasing you. Yes, I think that treats should be phased out and only every once in a while as they get older, but I don't see a problem with using them for puppies. Nebo got treats for everything in his puppy class, but it did not make him ignore commands without treats. It was a bit hard to get him to do stuff w/o seeing food at first, but he's fine with it now. He will do *any* trick without seeing a treat.

Did you guys ever start into using clickers for the training? What kind of praises did you do? They had us say "Yes!" at first then move onto the clickers (only for teaching new things).

I think choosing a trainer is up to you, but maybe you could start asking around and finding out how other people train, and see what method works best for you...and Malone.