Puppy School

Puppy Preschool is an enjoyable way of encouraging early socialisation, introducing training and to help with educating both owners and puppies.

Many behavioural problems that we see in dogs can be due to lack of proper socialisation and learning basic manners in the first critical weeks of life. With this course you can feel confident that you are giving your puppy a good head start towards being a well-behaved and well-adjusted adult dog.

For best results, begin training your puppy when still a puppy.  The “critical period” for socialisation, handling and training is between 3 and 14 weeks of age.  At this time it is important to expose your puppy to as many novel things as possible in a non-threatening way. This early socialisation period is “critical” because even a small amount of experience at this age can have long lasting effects on the dog. Puppies learn dog language at this age. Those pups that are not exposed to other dogs during this socialisation period are more likely to develop unacceptable social behavious, such as aggression or fearful responses to other dogs, just as puppies that are not socialised to humans often develop behavioural problems.

Whilst we currently do not run a puppy school at the moment there are several reputable puppy schools around. Puppy classes should ideally be smaller classes, with a qualified dog trainer who understands animal behaviour. It is also important that pups are of similar ages between ideally between 10-14 weeks of age.