Obedience Class Week 3 OR In what new and creative ways can Chester embarrass us?

So this evening was Obedience Class Week 3 (2nd with dogs). It started out poorly right off the bat as we walked into the building. I had Chester on the leash, and he was pulling as usual. All of a sudden a lady starts shouting at me across the parking lot and coming at me, "THAT'S NOT HOW YOU LEAD A DOG INTO CLASS." I was like uhhhhhhhhh... and looked at Adam desperately for help. This crazy lady continues to yell and scold me, grabs Chester's leash, and starts yanking on it and yelling at him. Then she tells me, "I know what I'm doing because I'm the owner of this place." WAIT - WHAT? I was so taken aback I just stood there waiting for the verbal lashing to end. I like our trainer, but let's just say that once we're done with these sessions we won't be back. I'm sooo unbelievably unimpressed because of that encounter.

Then we get inside, and Chester starts his barking. He gets squirted with the water bottle and calms down. Next we're told that the lady from the dog business next door is here to let us try Thundershirts for the "insecure" dogs. Apparently Chester is one of them. I kind of take issue with them constantly trying to sell us stuff (first class it was Gentle Leaders). He ended up wearing the Thundershirt for half of the class. I really couldn't tell if there was much difference in his behavior. It did make him really hot though.

I was Chester's handler, and he was full of fail. He was so distracted and wouldn't focus. I was very patient with him though as I know he can sit and down on command. He was not cooperating though. We had been using his harness, but the instructor made us switch to his collar. She took him because he wasn't heeling, and he slipped out of it. So then she put a metal slip collar on him. This made me really nervous at first, but he actually was much better behaved on it. Well, other than the few temper tantrums he threw. He still refused to sit or down though, but his heeling was much improved. Since he wasn't responding to his treats to sit, she made us force him to sit with his leash (by pulling up on it). This resulted in me feeling like a bad mommy, and him flailing around. Usually he would eventually sit though.

He was AWFUL at the sitting and then waiting while I went through the "door" first. Everyone was watching, and we were terrible at it. The instructor thought his issue is that he's "spoiled." Meh. It's not like he isn't disciplined. He has to sit for everything. We practice from the course book almost every night. I don't get how he always ends up making us look like fools. The instructor said, "By his behavior, he's saying 'I don't normally have to do this.'" Except he DOES normally have to do it. I don't know, hopefully he's learning a lot. This just may not be the place for him though. We'll see...