Training unravels in boarding for a simple reason: dogs learn from whoever is handling them, and kennel staff handling dozens of dogs will default to their own words and rules unless you give them yours. Your dog does not need the boarding stay to become a training course. It needs the cues, rewards, and boundaries it already knows to stay recognisably the same, so home training resumes without an untraining period first.
Put the working cues on one page
List the cues your dog genuinely knows — not the ones you are still teaching — with the exact word, any hand signal, and what the dog should do. If 'down' means lie down and 'off' means get off the sofa, write that, because staff may use 'down' for both and quietly blur the distinction you built. Note the recall word and how it is rewarded, and mark it clearly as a word never to be called without a real reward behind it.
Add the reward system: what treats the dog works for, whether praise alone suffices for easy cues, and any foods the dog must not be given. Boarding staff reward constantly through the day, and a dog rewarded with whatever is at hand for behaviours you never reward — barking at the kennel door, for instance — comes home with new habits installed by accident.
Name the house rules that actually matter
Choose three or four non-negotiables and state them plainly. Typical ones: the dog waits at doors rather than barging through, four paws stay on the floor during greetings, no feeding from plates, and the dog settles on its own bed rather than furniture — if that is your rule at home. A short list gets followed; a page of twenty rules gets skimmed and forgotten by the second day.
Be realistic about the environment. In a kennel, some arousal is unavoidable, and a young dog's greeting manners may slip while it is there. Decide in advance which rules are safety rules that must hold — door waiting, recall, no mouthing — and which are polish you can rebuild in the week after pickup without resentment.
Brief a human, not just a form
Hand the cue sheet over in a short conversation at drop-off, not folded into a bag. Demonstrate the two or three cues that matter most, especially any signal the dog reads better than the word. Ask who will actually handle the dog day to day, and whether the sheet stays with the dog's record or in a general file — the best-written instructions fail if they never reach the person opening the kennel each morning.
On longer stays, a mid-stay update asking specifically about training behaviours — is she waiting at the gate, is recall still sharp on the exercise run — signals that these details are being watched and valued.
Reinstall home rules calmly after pickup
Expect a few days of testing at home: the dog checks whether boarding looseness applies here too. Return to the original cues and rewards without scolding, reward the first correct responses generously, and the home pattern usually snaps back quickly because it was never fully replaced — just paused.
Keeping the cue sheet where every handler can see it is what makes that pause harmless, and KinsLe supports it through Care Teams, where your dog's daily duties and handling notes sit together so a boarding helper follows the same words and rules you listed for home.