Puppy Basic - entry level training for puppies up to 18 weeks old
Course Dates:
- Buckinghamshire: Unique Pets, Winslow, with Nick: New dates coming soon
- Buckinghamshire: Wendover Heights Vets, Wendover, with Nick: Saturday 18th May, 10.00am - 11.00am
- Buckinghamshire: Wendover Heights Vets, Wendover, with Nick: Saturday 15th June, 11.15am - 12.15pm
- London: St Stephen's Church Centre, Weir Road, London SW12 0NU, with Jenny: New Dates Coming Soon
- Oxfordshire: Fringford Village Hall, Fringford, with Nick: Thursday 30th May, 7.00pm - 8.00pm.
Our puppy classes focus on teaching bite inhibition (gentle jaws), socialisation with other dogs and people, calming and handling, focus, off-leash household manners/obedience and the prevention of behaviour and temperament problems.
Special emphasis is paid to phasing out the need for using food in training, to create reliable verbal and hand signals and off-leash control (around the home or on walks), yet promoting the continued use of food treats to teach dogs to thoroughly enjoy the company of people and other dogs.
You will learn how to observe, handle and train your puppy to give you a strong foundation on which calm and well behaved dogs grow.
Classes are taught entirely off-leash to maximise play and socialisation. Puppies are trained within the play session so that owners may learn to calm and control their puppies when excited and distracted and so that play may be used as the ultimate reward.
Early puppy classes are essential to ensure puppies develop bite inhibition and become people-friendly, dog-friendly and mannerly around people and other dogs. Learning bite inhibition and socialisation are easy and enjoyable in puppyhood but if your puppy does not acquire reliable bite inhibition in puppyhood, he will become potentially dangerous as an adult. If your puppy is not thoroughly socialised in puppyhood, remedial socialisation will take many months (and maybe years). In short, your dog will never be the relaxed and confident dog that they could have been.
A large part of Puppy Basic comprises teaching basic manners in a distracted setting. Reward-based training is simple, easy and extremely effective for training young puppies. Puppy Basic lays the groundwork for reliable verbal and hand signals and off-leash control that you will master in Puppy Advanced.
As part of your class you will have access to online resources to learn how to prevent the development of (or resolve) utterly predictable, yet surprisingly common, puppy and adolescent behaviour and temperament problems.
In no time at all, compliance becomes a matter of puppy preference as your puppy learns to listen to you because that is what they want to do, responding to "sit", "down", "stand", "leave it", "give", "heel", "stay" and coming back to you when you call it, plus games and fun to have with your puppy to aid their learning.
Before You Book: Puppies must be between 10 and 18 weeks old and have completed at least one vaccination against parvo and distemper.
Course length: 6 weeks
Thank you so much - Tarka and I have really enjoyed the sessions - thank you so much for it all -