The first six months is the most important time of a dog's life. If you equate the developmental stages to that of a young child you will find yourself dealing with a blur of activity that roughly corresponds to the first six or seven years of a human life! So to the question, "When do I start training my puppy?" Consider the following: Young children go through the first few years of their life vocalizing for their needs and wants to be met, tasting, touching, making messes, and sleeping! I know I haven't covered all the gory details, but lets just work with these main ideas. As we provide for these helpless dependent children, so too must we provide for these helpless and dependent babies of an entirely different species!
In other words take care to provide them with a safe environment when you can't supervise them, this being a crate or kennel, not a bathroom or garage! Remember they are babies, not little monsters out to get you for leaving them alone, they chew for many reasons, revenge is not one of them! They too must learn by tasting, touching, and exploring. Training begins when you bring your puppy home and ends when it has drawn it's last breath, hopefully many, many years later. Following is an outline of our puppy class. We believe it to be superior to any other program out there. We believe in starting our puppies in a formal class as soon as they've had their second vaccinations. This usually being 10-12 weeks of age.
Puppy Class is eight, one-hour sessions. The course is broken down into three, twenty-minute periods. Classes are once per week, for eight weeks. The first twenty minutes is spent on puppy socializing, the pups run around and play together, dragging their leashes or long lines with them. This allows them some freedom, but keeps the owners in control. This twenty minute play period includes some long line training, including teaching the informal recall "here" as opposed to "come". We do some retrieving training in this period of the course as well, this is invaluable in all aspects of the dog's training and allows you to exercise your dog in a short time and with little effort. Mainly though, this period allows us to determine a young pups social graces, how the pup behaves with other pups it's own age, does it show dominance and aggression or fear and submission?		Learning to play well with their peers is as important as obedience!
These are areas of a pups personality that can be modified to prevent future problems such as a dog fighter or fear aggressive dog. Learning to read your pups body language can be the key to training a happy, confident, fun-loving dog.
The second twenty minutes is spent on "placement and praise" obedience. The obedience portion of the course teaches you to teach your pup some basic commands and actions by giving a command, placing them in position, and praising them for being there. The program is designed for young distractible minds! We only do twenty minutes of obedience because any more would be very frustrating for owner and pup! The course includes, heel, sit and sit-stay, down and down-stay, stand and stand-stay, and the recall (come when you're called!). Most puppies do very well at these exercises and will even learn to hold sit and down stay exercises while people walk by and touch them or step over them! How well your pup does depends on how much time and effort you as an owner put into the program! We can only instruct you, it's your job to work with your pup! ·
The final twenty minutes of class is the favorite for pups and owners alike, this is the time we spend teaching the pups a very safe but exciting obstacle course! The pups learn to climb up and over an "A-frame", they navigate through a short open tunnel, a longer straight tunnel, a tunnel with a 90 degree turn in it, a tunnel with two 90 degree turns in it, a blind tunnel, and an elevated plank system with different challenges at each end! This course is designed to create confidence and give the puppies a fun exciting end to each lesson at puppy school!

A confident dog is far more easily trained than a dog with fears! Start them young, train them consistently and everything will come together! Our goal is to make owning a dog, whatever the age, a pleasure, not a burden! Please go and see more of our Puppy Class pictures in the Academy Gallery

Blitz learns how to retrieve.

Yogi encourages her along!

Last Update Tuesday, October 19, 2004