When is your puppy not learning?

Hey, it’s Clare, I’ve taken over the puppy blogs!! 

I’m going to use my experience, what the research shows us and input from our amazing clients to give you regular tips to help you with raising your puppy or preparing for a new addition. 

 Question: When is your puppy not learning? 

 Answer: NEVER…even when they are asleep their tiny brains are processing everything they’ve just learnt. 

 What does that mean for you as your puppy’s guardian? 

•  It means you’ve got to plan ahead and know what you want your puppy to learn, if you want them to greet people with all four feet on the ground you need to know how and when you're going to practice 

• You'll need good management strategies, remember your puppy is learning all of the time, make sure it's the stuff you do want them to learn. 

• You’ve got to know what floats your puppy’s boat, you need to be able to reward them for making those good choices 

Week 3 in our Puppy Foundations class is all about helping your puppy to learn good manners. One of the biggest problems new puppy owners bring to class is that their puppy wants to jump up at people to greet them and they would like their puppy to keep 4 feet on the ground, because it’s more polite and much safer! 

In last week’s class Juno the Labrador puppy was learning that she was much more likely to get attention or food rewards if she sat in front of people rather than jumping up at them. While her dads were learning how to manage situations so that Juno wasn't practising the unwanted behaviour.

Calling all Puppy Class graduates...


Are you a recent puppy class graduate and keen to discover your pups hidden talent? Could they be a Super Sniffer? a budding Agility Addict? a Parkour Ninja that loves climbing on things? or a Canicrosss Champion? 

Our 10 week Canine Activity Foundation Class gives you and your dog an introduction to a variety of different dog sports, teaching you some of the key skills required and discovering what you are going to enjoy doing together. 

 Classes start on Monday 21st January at 7.30pm 

 Book Canine Activity Foundations  

Having trouble with manners, recall or lead walking? 

Our three week intensive might be for you! 

These short focused courses allow you to practice on the one thing your dog struggles with, so rather than trying to learn lots of new skills all at once we'll just give you what you need to work on the main thing you need help with. 

 Book your class  


Happy Training 

Clare 

Stop trying to do it all at once!

Do you wake up some mornings determined to be a better human being, exercise more, make a smoothie for breakfast (and put kale in it!), work on your dog’s recall and get out to work on time?

Be honest – how does that work out for you?

For most of us, we manage about one thing on the list, once. And then we give up because changing more than one thing at a time is just too darn hard.

The truth is that setting focused goals, and concentrating on what will get us closer to those goals, is a much faster way to make progress.

That’s why we don’t offer generic obedience classes any more. We’ve tried them in various formats for years, but without ever feeling like we’d really gotten the formula right. 

Once you survive past early puppy hood, the big challenges are

1. Coming back reliably (recall)
2. Walking nicely on lead (loose lead walking)
3. Not jumping up or stealing things (calmness and manners)

And to teach all of those things we first need attention and focus! 

Classes that try to teach everything to 4 or more dogs usually end up with at least some dogs struggling and you feeling like you’re not getting what you need.

Solution?

Understand that your dog needs to want to and enjoy offering you his attention, and work on that first.

Then choose ONE priority challenge to concentrate on.

Of course working on one of those things generally has a nice knock-on effect for everything else, but you’re not worrying about that.

So if you want help with your dog who pulls on the lead, doesn’t come back reliably and still jumps up….we’re going to ask you to pick just one of those things to concentrate on first.

Get help with the basics in our Skills Clinics starting on Monday September 3rd. 

A three week block intensive focused on just one challenge with only two dogs in each session. It's like having a private lesson but more affordable!

Choose from (click the class to get to the booking page)

7.10pm Baby Come Back! Recall Skills

or

7.45pm Stay By My Side! Loose Lead Walking

Poorly dog update

Some of you may have noticed I’ve not been quite my usual cheerful self at classes. Freya has been very poorly for the last 10 days with what we think is a combination of a foreign body in her paw plus a deep bone infection in her toe.

Everything is crossed for the antibiotics helping the infection for now, and if I seem a little distracted please forgive me.

It’s proving a challenge to manage the exuberant teenage Laird, a collie who is in pain but also really wants to go on her walks, and Bronte who still needs some exercise but is retired from running *sigh*

Solutions thus far have included setting up play dates for Laird, Scentwork for Bronte and Laird, and working on key tugging for Freya plus some “cone of shame” practice which she loves!

Wishing for a peaceful week for everyone!

Morag and the beasts

Want to have more fun with your dog?

Canine Activities Foundations Workshop Sunday 9th September

In a world filled with so many exciting dog activities it can be difficult to know which to try first, or even which one your dog will enjoy most!

Come to our Canine Activities Foundations Workshop and let your dog try out three of our most exciting activities; Parkour, Agility and Scentwork!

Book your workshop here

Canicross Workshops

Try out Canicross (running with your dog) or build on the basics with race starts, passing and control.

• Getting Started: Saturday 22nd September (morning) Wigginton
• Improvers: Saturday 22nd September (afternoon) Wigginton
• Trails and Skills Adventure: 13th October (a full day in the Moors!)

Book your Canicross workshop