Swap them into another intake if you run one, send the week's notes if you do not, and do not give money back. A missed lesson costs you nothing you can recover and the family nothing they paid separately, because the course was priced and sold as one thing.
The instinct to credit comes from appointment thinking. A missed groom is a slot you could have sold to somebody else, so a fee or a refund squares it. A missed lesson is not a slot. The hall was hired, the instructor taught, and the other five families got the class. There is nothing to recover.
The week they miss is worth more than the money
What the family actually loses is sequence, and that is the thing to price your response against.
Take a six-week programme where week two is loose-lead and week three builds recall on top of it. A puppy that misses week two arrives at week three without the foundation, so the handler spends the lesson behind, gets frustrated, and starts wondering whether the course is working. That is the risk. It is not the $50 of value in one evening.
So the response that protects your reputation is the one that gets the content into the house, not the one that moves money. A ten-minute written summary with the homework attached costs you ten minutes and keeps a family on track. A refund costs you fifty dollars and keeps them behind.
There is a second reason to be firm. The moment a missed week is refundable, attendance becomes optional, and a class of eight with two families away every week is a worse class for the six who came.
Arrange the swap before the night, not after
If you run the same programme twice a week, a swap is the best answer you have: the family who cannot do Tuesday's week three does Thursday's week three, sits the correct lesson with the correct content, and rejoins their own class the week after.
- Open Courses, then Manage on the course and View Course.
- On the pet's card, open its menu and select Move to Another Course.
- Under Sessions to move, choose Select Sessions and pick the single lesson rather than the whole enrolment, then select Next: Choose Course.
- Under Target course and sessions, pick the other night and its matching lesson, then select Next: Review.
- Answer Notify customer?, then select Confirm Move and Move Attendee.
The timing is the part that catches people. A lesson whose date has already passed cannot be moved, so this only works if the family tells you beforehand.
That one constraint should shape what you say at enrolment. Ask families to let you know before the class if they cannot make it, and say plainly that a heads-up is what makes a swap possible. You are not asking for courtesy. You are telling them the mechanism.
Watch the class you are moving them into as well. The swapped puppy takes a place on that night, so a Thursday class already at capacity has no room for a Tuesday visitor.
Recording it so the term still makes sense in week six
There is no absent marker in Petboost, and that is worth knowing before you go looking for one. A lesson you never check in simply stays Confirmed, unless the template has auto-start lessons switched on under Automatic Actions, in which case the clock moves it on without you. Managing course enrolments covers enrolment, capacity and the roster.
Put the reason in the Course Notepad on the day. It takes a line, and in week six it is the difference between knowing a puppy missed recall week and guessing why it is the one struggling at the graduation exercise.
Two or three absences in a row is a different conversation. At that point the useful offer is a place in the next intake rather than a third set of notes, and the family is usually relieved somebody said it. Note that in the notepad too, because a family who transfers out mid-term and rings six weeks later should not have to explain themselves twice.
Whatever you settle on, put it in the enrolment message. A make-up policy that exists only in your head is a policy you will end up arguing about in a car park, and the family will be right that nobody told them.
Before you act: course terms, make-up entitlements and refund rights are commercial terms between you and your customer, and this is general information rather than legal advice. Check your own terms and your obligations under Australian consumer law before you publish a no-refund position.