It is rare that age is a concern in the outcome of your training course.  The most difficult party to train is always the human; with the right techniques, dogs pick up the majority of tasks far quicker than their human counterparts!  As long as your dog is in a healthy condition, training can commence.

In Australia, the scope of techniques used and taught in the general dog training / puppy class scenario is very limited.  When it comes to dealing with aggression issues, the techniques you have been shown are often detrimental to training, or entirely ineffective.  Over 15 years of developing and honing the unique techniques you will see in our appointments has made our work extremely effective and often the last and final solution in a long history of training attempts.

In the case of a dog showing aggressive traits, desexing is mandatory before training starts.  Unless your dog has a medical reason it cannot be desexed, it is generally requested all dogs over 6 months of age be desexed to start training with Clever Paws. Unfortunately if your dog is not desexed, with a male dog, training becomes much harder on the dog, as the dog will constantly be trying to fight compulsory tasks, and with a female, the potential to develop aggressive traits whilst in season is also easily avoided with this standard operation.  No, desexing a dog is not a natural thing to do, but neither is keeping them in a domestic environment.  If there is a particular reason your dog must be kept entire, we are happy to discuss this prior to arranging bookings.

Absolutely!  The course guide has been put in place to provide a rough idea of what can be achieved in the respective course sessions, but in almost all cases, the course will be altered  as needed to work with the individual needs of each client’s situation.  Bring a list to your first appointment, and we will negotiate reasonable goals to fit our training budget.

All training is 100% one on one with clients.  Our high success rate has only been achieved by strictly working individually with each client through each learning stage.  A class situation has a high failure rate, and typically dog owners will pick up very few practical techniques that can be used on a day to day basis.

Your first dog training and behavioural sessions will be at your home in areas on the Fleurieu Peninsula such as Victor Harbour, Middleton, Port Elliot, Goolwa and Hayborough.   However, as quickly as possible we will want to get you and your dog outside, working in the usual distracting areas you will frequent in future such as beaches, walking areas, and your local neighbourhood.

If we train your dog, your dog will largely behave for us.  If we train you how to train your dog, you will get results immediately yourself, and have the tools to handle whatever life throws at you both down the track.  However, with a dog showing aggressive traits, you will never be asked to train or attempt to control your dog in an uncontrollable situation, and there is a much higher level of ‘hands on’ work from your behaviourist than in other cases.  At all times however, you will be present and quite possibly be doing more learning than your dog.

In most cases, based on the fact that you are the one being taught, we are able to adapt training to suit multiple dogs and still complete our training in close to the same amount of time / cost as having one dog.  But this is something to have a chat to us about, as each situation does vary.