Training Services

Puppy Preschool Goals 

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House Manners & Schedule

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• Crate Training: puppy can be crated 4 hours at night without having an accident. Can take an afternoon nap or rest time up to 3 hours at a time.

• Potty Training: be able to wait up to 1 hour between potty breaks while playing in the house with your supervision and a potty schedule to support a healthy positive view of eliminating in the appropriate area.

• Teething & Chew Training: understand the word “no” or “eh-eh” when chewing something they shouldn’t and stopping engagement when a puppy is mouthing and redirecting the puppy to a positive activity.

• Jump Training: begin to understand and respond to the word “off” or “down “when they jump up on you or furniture or any unwanted or unsafe objects or surfaces.

Every day we are working continuously on house training alone. It takes a large amount of patience, time, and consistency to master house/potty training.

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Obedience Training

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Each day during the week we take each individual puppy and familiarize each command. This takes a lot of time and skill, but our pups have more training than an average puppy of the same age!

• Sit: recognition of and obeying sit verbally and with a combination of verbal & hand commands

• Stay/Wait: stay from a distance of 5 feet for a duration of 5 seconds. Wait politely for food in a sitting position (starting at 10 seconds)

• Down: obey down with a combination of verbal & hand commands using praise when commands are accomplished

• Come: to come with a high-pitched happy voice from short distances with the combination of verbal & hand signals.

• Off: begin to understand “off” when they jump up on you or furniture.

• Place: get onto a raised bed or mat with guidance of hand signal along with the verbal command.

• Leash Etiquette: walking on the left side in a loose-leash heel position with limited pulling in a low distraction environment. Begin to auto-sit and look for directions from handler. We use a collar and / or harness to get a puppy accustomed to wear either one.

• Stair Training & Practice: to be able to slowly make it up and down stairs safely.

• Kennel/Crate Relationship: puppy will go into kennel with guidance of commands and hand signals and feel safe and comfortable. Limited protest.

 

Socialization Training

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Socialization Training is the next smart puppy point of training, we are introducing a puppy to other dogs and humans in varying looks, sizes, and ages.​​

• Physical Handling: Since your puppy has yet to be fully inoculated, we take extra precautions and restrict exposure to be mostly our puppy raisers, trainers, veterinarian, family and guests. Our girls help with the training also, so puppies learn, even the kids are people they need to respect not just play with. 

• Child & New People Trained: all pups are introduced to our young children and extended family; this gives them exposure on how to appropriately play with smaller children.

• Other dogs: they meet, greet, play with, and /or interact with age and size appropriate size at our facility and in our controlled environments.

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Desensitization Training

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The next smart puppy area of training is desensitization. At this stage of life, desensitization goes hand in hand with socialization and many times overlap one another. We focus our desensitization training by teaching a puppy to be calm and confident with new activities, people and environments. With our training program, we start exposure early on and make happy, positive associations. We allow puppies to observe their surroundings, and this includes many daily household happenings. Noises, new people, new smells, children, animals, and small adventures to explore and support a puppy’s curiosity, supervised, helping them to have a solid confidence to learning.

• Sounds: the puppy is accustomed to being around certain sounds – such as the television at regular volumes and vacuums but will still most likely be uncomfortable around very loud new sounds. We encourage puppies to move through the scary noise with encouragement and happy tones and direction.

• Vet Training: the puppy able to be picked up, and travel to the vet. Dogs of any age can struggle with vet visits, so we like to get a jump start to make sure puppies have happy vet visits and associations with the veterinary office and exam handling.

• Grooming Exposure: puppies are trained with their basic bath time routine so they will be comfortable and calm while being bathed and brushed (they still might be uncomfortable with blow dryers) Nail Trims and paw handling is a part of our handing exercises but we expose them to all the maintenance grooming tasks 2 times a week to help reduce any anxiety and help them see grooming a positive experience. Ear cleanings, hair trimming, electric trimmers, blow dryer, nail trims and sanitary trims are all a part of what each puppy is accustomed to.

• Car Rides/Travel – the puppy begins exposure to riding in a car securely or with a buddy. We pick them up and put them into the car since they are not yet able to jump into and out of the car yet. Your puppy will be getting more comfortable with riding in the car either in a kennel or in the backseat. There are some dogs that get motion sickness. Taking our puppies for car rides at an early age, we set our puppies up for success to help them feel more comfortable and confident

 

End of 4 week board & train, puppy graduates with their AKC STAR Puppy Certificate. 

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8 Weeks of Training

 

At this Developmental Marker each puppy can understand more and more each about the ways of their world. Leash walking is now a fun activity for them and they are able to enjoy their world expanding. 

 

We focus on:

Advancement in obedience skills

• Sit with a little longer wait

• Appropriate play and bite inhibition

• Place and little longer stay 

• Solidified potty training 

• Manners around food 

• Paws on the floor (No Jumping)

• Walking loosely on a leash 

• We do puppy massage to maintain comfortable handing 

• AKC Star Puppy Certificate 

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12 Weeks of Training

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• Includes everything in the 4 & 8 week training options. Each course builds upon the next.

• Graduate with Canine Good Citizen Certificate.

• Focused training for therapy/service work, if desired.

• Public training with distractions and strangers, since puppy is now fully vaccinated. Places we would train: Lowe’s, Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, etc.

• Puppy will come home fully vaccinated.

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Our goal is to work closely with all puppy families and customize their training package to fit each families lifestyle.