Your puppy is best starting training from 8 weeks of age, but you can easily start this course anytime from 8 weeks until 6 months of age.

It is rare that age is a concern in the projected outcome of your training course.  If you have a puppy, this does not come into the equation at all.

From birth through their entire life, dogs are constantly ‘in training’, or learning.  The problem with waiting to start training until your puppy is older, is the simple fact your puppy will be rapidly learning a detrimental set of life skills that you will then have to un-train, and then re-train a new set of skills in the future.  The whole point in getting a puppy is to be able to shape his environment and future in a way that is the least stressful as possible for both the puppy and the puppy’s family.  If you leave this until later, you will be giving yourself more work than required, putting up with a lot of problems you don’t need to in the mean time, and putting your dog under stress it didn’t need to go through if you had given him the right signals from the start.

Absolutely!  In your first appointment, bring a list of where you would like to be in 6-12 months time with your dog.  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.

All training is 100% one on one with clients.  Our high success rate is largely attributed to strictly working individually with each client through each learning stage.  A class situation has a high outright failure rate, and typically puppy owners will pick up very little practical techniques that can be used on a day to day basis.  Not to mention the bad habits picked up by the popular uncontrolled crazy socialisation part of puppy classes.

One of the biggest issues with the commercialised puppy class, is the excessive play drive developed towards other dogs in a room full of crazy puppies.  Your puppy needs to be socialised in a more natural, controlled environment where the focus is on still listening to you, as the wise handler that knows not all dogs are safe, not all people should be greeted, and that puppy looking like so much fun, is actually on the other side of a busy road.  If you want a dog only interested in chasing other dogs, puppy class socialisation is great, but if you want a dog with control around other dogs, learn how to train and socialise it in real life around real life situations and everyday dogs.

Your first training session will be at your home, however as quickly as possible we will want to get you and your puppy working in the usual distracting areas you will frequent in the future such as beaches, walking areas, and your local neighbourhood.

How amazing would it be if you could actually understand how to communicate with your dog in a way where you both enjoy spending time together, and can go on outings to the beach, parks, and events together as a little team?  Well, that is exactly what we teach, and the only way for you to get that relationship, is to learn how to train and communicate yourself.  With puppies, we try and have a very ‘hands off’ approach as much as possible, so you get to practice and learn under supervision.  Sadly for us, this works so well, we don’t get to play with the puppies very much!  But for you, you get to step into life with your dog confident in how to work well together.

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.