Puppy School

[San Lo]

Good Morning All,

I am getting a puppy next week 27/12 and I am currently looking for a puppy school.

I live in Doncaster East in Melbourne (victoria) and was wondering if any recommdations to a good puppy school.

I plan to provide him with both Puppy school and basic training when he gets older.

Hes currently 8 weeks old. Another question is what vacinations does he need before he can go to puppy school.

Regards San

[superminty]

Good Morning All,

I am getting a puppy next week 27/12 and I am currently looking for a puppy school.

I live in Doncaster East in Melbourne (victoria) and was wondering if any recommdations to a good puppy school.

I plan to provide him with both Puppy school and basic training when he gets older.

Hes currently 8 weeks old. Another question is what vacinations does he need before he can go to puppy school.

Regards San

Sorry, no recommendations for puppy school that side of town, but generally pups just need their first vaccination before starting puppy school - although it is always worth checking if the floor the classes will be held on will be cleaned/disinfected prior to classes, just in case.

My advice is to also look for a puppy school where the instructor primarily uses positive reinforcement techniques, and to avoid ones that have pups predominantly off lead - IMO small periods of off lead play between 2 pups, supervised by the instructor would be ok, but not a free-for-all at any stage.

[Staff'n'Toller]

Hi San,

I teach Puppy School at West Doncaster Vet. I have a course beginning 29.12.12, 'puppy parents' only for the first class, so we can discuss toilet training, puppy mouthing and other pressing things in depth.

Feel free to PM me over the weekend if you'd like the details. :)

Mel.

[amw]

Hi

Our puppy is now 6 months old and we went with Command dog training. They are based in the eastern suburbs with a few different venues and times (Richmond, Blackburn and Mackinnon) so lots of flexibility. We went with the indoor option at Richmond with Lyn and found the course excellent. We combined this with the basic obedience course which we have recently completed and we are now going on to intermediate.

http://www.dogtraining.com.au/

Lots of positive reinforcement and a carefully controlled environment. Lyn is a super experienced dog trainer and we found her to be a wealth of knowledge and practical advice for our puppy. We also found she was great at adapting what she was teaching to the different personalities and temperament of the puppies.

The continuity across courses and levels of obedience training has been really helpful and it was for this reason that we decided to go with a professional dog trainer/school with an established training philosophy that we liked. On these forums I had found a few posts expressing some wariness or concern about puppy classes at a local vet. The experiences here suggest it can be a real mixed bag with some reporting success and others finding their puppies have found the experience intimidating and fearful especially off leash.

I tried a local obedience club also. We completed the puppy classes and our little one (mostly) enjoyed it. I did it mostly for the socialisation benefits but disagreed with some of the training tools and philosophy. Some of the other puppies clearly found the experience very overwhelming and intimidating. Accordingly I really stuck with what we had learnt with Lyn. My take out from that was the need to research the different options, being very careful and knowing what is important to you when socialising and training.

Good luck with your new puppy.

[amw]

Oh and we gave ours the c5 vaccination the day after we got him, when we took him to get a vet check, so that a week later he could start puppy school.