Puppy School and Dog Training Woollahra | The Toe Beans Co

Queen Street on a Saturday morning is one of the better dog-watching spots in Sydney. Woollahra dog owners are out early, coffee in hand, and a lot of those dogs are pulling hard toward the next cafe table or lunging at a Cavoodle coming the other way. We work with dogs and their people all through Woollahra, from the backstreets around Moncur Street to the paths through Trumper Park, and what we see consistently is this: the dog is not the problem. The training just never went far enough. We offer puppy school, adolescent training, and adult dog training across Woollahra, and we come to you.

We work across Woollahra and the surrounding streets. You can see our service area below.

Puppy School in Woollahra

Raising a dog that is calm, listens when it counts, and handles the world around it without falling apart is simply a bigger job than four weeks of group classes can do on its own. Group puppy school is a good start. It socialises your dog, gets you around other owners, and covers the basics. But puppyhood does not stop at week four, and most of what shapes your dog's behaviour happens in the weeks and months after class ends. Our Complete Puppy Program exists because we think you deserve more than a certificate and a wave goodbye. Luke Buchanan built this program around what owners actually need: structured support through the whole of puppyhood, not just the early bit.

We combine a four-week group puppy school with 1:1 in-home sessions, a 26-module online course, and personalised support through to 8 months old. The online course covers things that most puppy schools do not get near: the correct socialisation window, which closes at 24 weeks and not at 12 or 16 as many people assume; week-by-week guidance tied to your puppy's actual developmental stage; breed-specific behaviour profiles; and a full module on preparing for adolescence before it catches you off guard. If your puppy is going to be running along the paths in Trumper Park by six months, you want to know what to expect from them at that age, not be surprised by it. We offer three support levels: Silver covers the initial 1:1 home session, puppy school, and ongoing support. Gold adds two further 1:1 sessions, which is well suited to owners who want hands-on work with recall and calm walking. Platinum is for owners who want the most support available, with up to 10 one-to-one sessions and direct phone and video tutorial access. We are also developing an AI-powered support tool built on the full course content, for those moments when a question comes up at 10pm and you just need a clear answer.

Adult Dog Training in Woollahra

Not every dog came to you as a puppy, and not every puppy got the start they needed. We work with adult and adolescent dogs across Woollahra whose owners are dealing with the kind of behaviour that makes daily life harder than it should be: pulling on lead through the narrow streets around Holdsworth Street, barking at the gate when a delivery arrives, reacting badly to other dogs on the Queen Street stretch, or separation distress in apartments where the walls are not thick. These are real problems with real solutions, and the solution is not a pinch collar or a firm voice. It is understanding what is driving the behaviour and working on it properly.

Our adolescent program includes two dedicated in-home sessions of two to two and a half hours each, access to the full 26-module online course, and three months of personalised 1:1 support. Adult dog training covers one or two in-home sessions, breed and behaviour guides, and three months of follow-up support. Both programs include lifetime community access and the dog calming code. We come to your home because that is where the behaviour actually happens, and that is where the work needs to be done.

How We Train

We train force-free and we train to the science. Dog training as an industry is roughly 20 years behind human behavioural science, and we work to close that gap in every session. That means no aversives, no dominance theory, and no methods designed around intimidation. But it also means we do not lock ourselves into a single approach. We use positive reinforcement alongside Relational Leadership, because different dogs respond differently, and different owners respond differently too. What works for a young Groodle in a house with a garden is not always the same thing that works for an anxious Dachshund in a Woollahra apartment.

Good training is about building a relationship between you and your dog that is clear, consistent, and works in the real world. Not just in a quiet training room. The goal is a dog that knows what you want from them, trusts that you mean what you say, and can hold it together when the world gets interesting. That is what we are working toward in every session we run.

What Woollahra Dog Owners Usually Get Wrong

The socialisation window is the big one. Most owners know vaguely that socialising a puppy early is important, but the window closes at 24 weeks, not at 12 or 16. A lot of puppies in Woollahra get taken along Queen Street a few times, meet a couple of dogs at the park, and are considered socially sorted by the time puppy school ends. Then at seven or eight months, the same dog starts reacting to strangers, stiffens up around other dogs, or falls apart in situations that should be routine. The groundwork was not laid when it mattered.

The second one is adolescence. People prepare for puppyhood. Almost nobody prepares for adolescence. Around four to six months, a dog that was responsive and biddable starts testing everything, ignoring recall, and generally behaving as though the last few months of training never happened. This is developmentally normal. It is not the dog being stubborn or bad. But if you do not know it is coming, it feels like everything has broken down, and that is when owners start reaching for quick fixes that do not actually fix anything.

And the third one: waiting too long. We see a lot of dogs in Woollahra where the owner has been tolerating a behaviour for a year or more, quietly hoping it will improve. Lead pulling, barking at the back fence, snapping when approached at the food bowl. The behaviour has been practised hundreds of times by the time we arrive. It can still be changed. But the earlier you work on it, the less work it takes.

Ready to Book?

If you have a new puppy and want to give them the best possible start, or if your dog has behaviours you have been trying to get on top of, we would like to help. We work across Woollahra and can usually get an initial session scheduled within a short lead time.

You can see all of our services and upcoming puppy schools, with their locations, below.