Puppy School and Dog Training in Bronte

Our dog training runs in three stages and you pick the one that matches your dog's age.

• 8 to 16 weeks: puppy school, which includes four weeks of group class
• 17 to 32 weeks: puppy training, for the stage where most owners feel they are losing the dog they had. There is no group class at this age
• 32 weeks and older: behaviour training, one to one in your own home

Puppy school runs at six venues, and all six take bookings: Paddington, Edgecliff, Neutral Bay, Zetland, Alexandria and Marrickville. Start dates vary by venue, so check the puppy school dates page for what is running next. Everything else happens in your own home, across Sydney.

One to one training happens in your home, anywhere in Sydney within roughly a forty five minute drive of the Harbour Bridge. That covers the:

• Inner City and City Centre
• Eastern Suburbs
• Inner West
• Lower North Shore
• Upper North Shore
• Northern Beaches
• Hills District
• Western Sydney
• South Sydney and St George

Group puppy school runs at six fixed venues within about eight kilometres of the Harbour Bridge: Paddington, Edgecliff, Neutral Bay, Zetland, Alexandria and Marrickville. All six are taking bookings. See the puppy school dates page for current dates.

Most lead reactivity comes from a dog that's taken on the job of managing potential threats itself, because it doesn't trust the person holding the lead to handle it. It's rarely aggression in the way people assume, and it's not about dominance.

Reactivity can be managed very well, and many dogs improve to the point where triggers barely affect them. It is more about changing your dog's emotional response to what scares them than removing the behaviour entirely.

Most puppies respond reliably indoors within two to four weeks of daily training. A recall that holds outdoors with distractions typically takes three to six months. The gap is about building the habit across increasingly difficult environments, not about the puppy being slow.

Not hard, but demanding. Border Collies learn faster than almost any other breed. The challenge is keeping them mentally occupied. A Border Collie that's bored will find things to do with that intelligence, and they're creative. Training is less about the dog learning and more about the owner keeping up.

A well-socialised dog that became reactive often turns around in a couple of months, while a dog with an aversive training history behind it is usually a year or more to full reliability. Anyone giving you a fixed week count is not being straight with you.

It depends on the dog and how long pulling has been the pattern. Some owners see a real difference within a couple of weeks of consistent stop, start, change direction. A dog with months or years of practice pulling usually takes longer to unlearn it.

It depends what you're solving for. For a specific behaviour problem or a nervous puppy, yes. For a healthy puppy whose only gap is socialisation, group school is usually the better value.

Graduation is the middle of the job, not the end of it. The four weeks cover the busiest part of the socialisation window, and that window stays open until six months, so the work carries on after the class ends. The next thing coming at you is adolescence, and that is where most owners get caught out.

You keep lifetime access to our community and to Ask Luke, our round the clock question service, with no message cap at any level. From Silver up the online course carries on through the weeks that follow, and at the higher levels you still have sessions in the bank for when something new turns up at seven months.