Puppy Classes & Obedience Training

Kristen White offers training classes, instructing owners on the basics of dog manners. Training is always easiest when an animal is young, and most likely to make sure your puppy grows up to be a well-behaved dog, but dogs of any age benefit from training.

Puppy Class

We offer a four-week training class for your puppy. This class is designed for puppies between the ages of 8-16 weeks of age. The class focuses on exposing your puppy to confidence building environments and enhancing your puppy’s communication skills.

Your puppy is enrolled in a one year Pet Parenting E-course from Animal Behavior Network.

Puppy classes are approximately one hour long. Call the office for dates and times available. Classes are organized in a way that allows new puppies to begin classes at any week in a four-week series. Each 60-minute class will consist of the following activities:

Controlled Social Interactions

Games such as “pass the Puppy” will be used to encourage puppies to socialize with a variety of people. Owners will learn to teach their puppies how to inhibit biting. Puppies will learn that people in uniforms, hats, or funny costumes are all part of life. Puppies will also be allowed time to interact with each other to learn safe normal canine body language.

Discovery Walks

Habituation to a variety of surface textures, objects, and situations will occur during each class. Metal grates, agility equipment, umbrellas, scooters and other items will be included. Exam rooms, hallways and outdoor environments will be utilized.

Basic Puppy Manners

Each class will cover a beginning puppy manners exercise such as leash walking and beginning commands such as “sit” and “down”.

Problem Prevention

Each week a new technique will be discussed to help prevent such common problems as separation anxiety, house-training problems, resource guarding, and destructive behaviors.

Classes are rotational allowing puppies to join at any time after receiving the orientation packet. This method also allows different puppies to be in each class, therefore exposing your puppy to many new friends over the four weeks.

Basic Manners

We offer a 6 week class for dogs over 6 months old (or that have completed our puppy class). We will teach your dog based on a learning theory known as operant conditioning. It is based on the idea that the consequences of a behavior (the event that immediately follows it) determine whether or not that behavior will be repeated.

A clicker is a device used as a communication tool. The clicker is going to come to mean, “That’s it! You’ve done the right thing!”

During the course of the class your dog will learn basic obedience skills such as attention, sit and stand, down, recalls, stay, and heeling. We will also address different adolescent dog behaviors and how to deal with them during each class.

Call for class dates/times
Contact the office for class dates!