Sydney ParkAlexandria ParkPerry ParkMitchell RoadBotany RoadMcEvoy StreetAlexandria CanalThe Grounds of Alexandria

Puppy School and Dog Training in Alexandria

Puppy school for Alexandria runs at Dogs in Town on Mitchell Road, inside the suburb rather than a drive away. Older dogs are trained one to one at your own address, across Alexandria, Erskineville, Beaconsfield and Rosebery.

See What We Do

Puppy school Alexandria, the short version

Quick Facts

Where We Work: In your own home, across Alexandria, Erskineville, Beaconsfield, Rosebery and St Peters

What We Offer

Council Area

City of Sydney

Nearest Puppy School Location

Dogs in Town, 266 Mitchell Road, Alexandria NSW 2015

Distance

In the suburb. Our Alexandria classes are on Mitchell Road itself

What We Cover

Puppies from eight weeks, teenage dogs, and adult behaviour

Who Does The Training?

Luke Buchanan, owner of The Toe Beans Co. Dog Trainer Academy trained, Red Cross pet first aid, AFP background checked

Where Alexandria sits

What It Is like

Alexandria is South Sydney, not the Inner West, whatever a real estate listing tells you. Anyone searching for a dog trainer in South Sydney is looking at this part of the map. It sits inside the City of Sydney between Erskineville, Beaconsfield and St Peters, and half of it is still working industrial land. Bourke Road, Euston Road and O'Riordan Street carry trucks all day, and plenty of people here walk their dog past a loading bay before they reach grass.

That gives an Alexandria puppy a sound environment most Sydney suburbs can't offer. Roller doors, forklifts, reversing beepers, courier vans at the same hour every morning. Met under threshold in the first sixteen weeks, that's close to free socialisation. Met badly, it's where a noise sensitivity gets built and then rehearsed twice a day for a year.

Green space is the other half, and it's the half owners get wrong. Sydney Park sits on the St Peters boundary and is one of the busiest off lead parks in the city. Alexandria Park is closer, smaller and far quieter. Which of the two your young dog meets first is something I end up explaining in nearly every Alexandria session.

Popular Landmarks

Sydney Park
Alexandria Park
Perry Park
Mitchell Road
Botany Road
McEvoy Street
Alexandria Canal
The Grounds of Alexandria

Main Housing Style

Converted warehouses, Victorian terraces with small courtyards, and new three and four level townhouses. Hard floors, open plan, and very little useable yard.

What we work on, by age

Puppies, 8 to 16 weeks

Toilet training without a lawn, and specifically not letting a rooftop terrace become the answer, because undoing a surface preference at nine months is a job nobody enjoys. A settle routine and a pen, which in an open plan conversion does the work a closed door does anywhere else. And the socialisation list, which here half writes itself. Trucks, roller doors and hard surfaces are two streets away. The skill is meeting them at a distance your puppy can still think at.

Teenagers, 17 to 32 weeks

Recall on a long line, months before Sydney Park is on the table, because the off lead areas there are unfenced and back onto Euston Road and the Princes Highway. Lead work on Botany Road and McEvoy Street, where the footpath is narrow and your dog has nowhere to move away to. And stairs, which an adolescent in a four level townhouse will run all day if nobody intervenes. That phase sits in our 17 to 32 week programme.

Adults, 32 weeks and over

Adult dog training in Alexandria is always one to one, at your own address. Barking when left is the one I hear about most from this postcode, and in a converted warehouse it travels further than owners expect, so it tends to arrive as a letter from the strata. Lead reactivity rehearsed on the same Mitchell Road route until it's automatic. Guarding a ground floor door on a street with constant deliveries. All of it through our dog training for 32 weeks and over, because none of it happens in a hall.

A man crouching in a studio while holding a Dalmatian puppy. The man is wearing a dark navy polo shirt and blue jeans, and the puppy is white with black spots.

A typical Alexandria case

A composite of the cases we see in this area rather than one client.

A Border Collie cross, eleven months old, ground floor of a converted warehouse off McEvoy Street. Settled at home. Not settled at Sydney Park, which is where the owners went every single morning without fail.

It had started barking at other dogs from about fifty metres out, then pulling hard on approach, then refusing food it would eat anywhere else. They'd read that as excitement and kept going, on the reasonable theory that more exposure sorts these things out. Six months of that, and it hadn't.

The dog was over threshold before it reached the gate, meaning past the point where it could take anything in. Sydney Park on a weekend morning holds an enormous number of loose dogs, and for a sensitive working breed that isn't socialisation. Every morning was another rehearsal of the same response, and the response was getting cleaner each time.

So we stopped going. The work moved to Alexandria Park early on a weekday, where the dog could see other dogs at a distance it could still think at, then onto the quiet streets north of Henderson Road where the distance was ours to set. Sydney Park came back four months later, on a long line, on a Tuesday.

Alexandria cases tend to run that way. The owners are doing more than most, not less. The environment they picked was too hard from week one, and repetition doesn't make it easier.

Want help putting this into practice?

The Toe Beans Co runs a free SKOOL community where Sydney dog owners get access to training guides, Q&As, and direct support from Luke. It's free to join.

Join the free community

What owners say, at every age

Absolutely fantastic, we had a 10 week old demanding Labrador puppy, 3 days later he barely lets out a yelp. It seemed expensive to get 1 on 1 help at first, but having him here meant we could remove any doubt about whether we were on the right track. Plus his online course and ongoing support have been a god send.

Mattice, 10 week old Labrador

I'm in Bellevue Hill and I'm struggling with recall and defiance with my 9 month old puppy. He thinks he's the boss. Luke at Toe Beans showed me a series of easy corrections and behavioural skills that my pup responded to almost immediately. He filled in my missing knowledge.

Lesley, 9 month old puppy, Bellevue Hill

I couldn't believe anyone could really have a big impact on a 7-year-old pet but within just one session, I could see a big difference in both of my dogs. They were calmer, more responsive, and Rosie was completely de-stressed around strange dogs.

Adrienne, 7 year old Bordoodle, Mosman