Puppy School Inner West Sydney - Now Running at Dogs in Town, Alexandria

The inner west has always been one of Sydney's most dog-forward communities. From Newtown to Glebe, Annandale to Balmain, the streets are full of dogs. 

The Toe Beans Co Puppy School is coming to Alexandria in June 2026, running at Dogs in Town on Mitchell Road. One of Sydney's most established dog care facilities, with a track record of looking after dogs of all breeds, sizes, and temperaments. Weekend sessions, small groups, and a 4 Week Puppy School within a 6 Month Program that covers behaviour, socialisation, commands, and owner education in equal measure.

If you're in the Inner West and you want to give your puppy the best possible start, this is where to begin.

Why Dogs in Town Alexandria

Dogs in Town on Mitchell Road is the original Dogs in Town location - the one the brand was built on, and still one of its most well-regarded. The facility runs daily daycare, boarding, and grooming with a team that has built a strong reputation for genuine care and professional management.

For puppy school purposes, Alexandria is an excellent base. The facility is large, well-maintained, and cleaned to a high daily standard. That hygiene level matters for young puppies whose immune systems are still developing - we won't run programs in spaces that don't meet that bar. The Mitchell Road location has been managing group dog environments safely for years, and that experience shows.

The location itself is also one of the most practical access points in Sydney. Sitting on the edge of the inner west and the inner south, it's easily reachable from Newtown, Erskineville, Glebe, Annandale, Pyrmont, Ultimo, Leichhardt, Balmain, and across to Surry Hills and Redfern. 

📍 Dogs in Town Alexandria - 266 Mitchell Road, Alexandria NSW 2015

The Inner West Dog Owner

We know the Inner West well. The dog owners here tend to be engaged, informed, and genuinely invested in doing right by their animal. They've often done their research and they ask good questions.That's exactly the kind of clients we work best with.

What we also see regularly in Inner West cohorts is the gap between good intentions and good execution. Owners who have read everything, set up beautifully, and still find themselves with a dog that has learned to work the system - because the structure wasn't consistent, because everyone in the house was doing something slightly different, or because treat-based training held up well until it suddenly didn't.

Our program is built to close that gap. Not by overloading you with theory, but by giving you a clear, practical framework and the skills to actually apply it consistently at home.

What the Program Covers

Week 1 - Foundations and First Impressions

A short, practical briefing and then straight into training. We cover structured puppy introductions, core commands (Sit, Down, Stay), supervised socialisation with narration, and hands-on help with biting, teething, and toileting. A framed photo of your puppy is taken in Week 1 and presented at graduation.

Week 2 - Adding Difficulty

Commands progress under distraction. We introduce Stay versus Wait, begin structured loose-lead walking, and address jumping and attention barking. The first two of the Five Golden Rules of Relational Leadership are introduced - the behavioural framework underlying everything we teach.

Week 3 - Building Reliability

Command chains for mental fatigue, recall under real distraction, off-leash structured walking, and separation anxiety prevention. Breed-specific guidance on exercise and stimulation as puppies grow noticeably more demanding by this stage.

Week 4 - Real-World Skills and Graduation

Walking techniques, park play education, early adolescent problem prevention, and graduation. Your framed Week 1 photo is presented, final Q&A is held, and you're connected into our Skool community for ongoing support after the program ends.

What's Included

• 1:1 In-Home Visit before the school starts - we come to your home, assess the setup, and lay the foundations for routine, boundaries, and behaviour before Week 1
• 4 Weeks of Puppy School at Dogs in Town Alexandria - weekend sessions, groups of 6 to 10 when your puppy is between 11 - 13 weeks and sufficiently vaccinated
• Skool community access - ongoing support via our private platform, long after graduation
• The Complete Puppy Preparation Program - Our Complete programming helping to get your dog from 8 weeks to 6 months. Covering crate setup, breed development, feeding protocols, week by week routines, breed specific guidance and more

Our Training Philosophy

No pain. No fear. No force. No aggression. This is the standard we hold at every session, at every location, without exception.

Our method is Relational Leadership - a framework focused on earning your dog's trust and respect through calm, consistent behaviour. Not through treats as a primary management tool. Not through corrections or physical pressure. Through clarity, routine, and the kind of leadership your dog can actually read and rely on.

Inner west owners often arrive already familiar with force-free training, which we welcome. Where we sometimes differ from pure positive reinforcement approaches is in the emphasis on behaviourism over command performance. Positive reinforcement is the pre-eminent method for training commands: like sit, down and stay. That's the easy stuff. A dog that knows fifteen commands but has no household boundaries, no impulse control, and no reliable recall in a distracting environment has not been well trained. Relational leadership fills this gap and helps your dog to live a calm life.

Common Misconceptions We Address

"The Inner West is so dog-friendly - surely socialisation just happens naturally." The Inner West's dog culture is one of its great strengths, but exposure and socialisation are not the same thing. Letting your puppy greet every dog on King Street is not structured socialisation. It can just as easily create reactivity, over-excitement, and poor greeting manners as it can produce a confident, well-adjusted dog. We teach socialisation deliberately - managed introductions, narrated interactions, and owner education about what they're actually watching.

"My dog is fine with other dogs - we just need to work on commands." A puppy that loves every dog it meets and ignores its owner while doing it is not socialised. Engagement with you needs to be more rewarding than engagement with other dogs. That's a training outcome, not a personality trait, and it's one of the most important things we work on across the four weeks.

"We've been doing treats and it's going great." Treat training works well for training commands, and no one can argue with that. It tends to break down at the precise moments you most need it - off-leash, around other dogs, when your dog is excited or stressed. We use treats as one tool within a broader framework, rather than as the framework itself.

"I've had dogs my whole life - I know what I'm doing." We hear this a lot, and we're not dismissive of it. Experience with adult dogs is genuinely useful. Raising a puppy from 8 weeks and setting all the right defaults is a different skill set, and even very experienced owners regularly tell us the program changed how they think about the early weeks. The dogs that tend to be hardest to live with at 2 years old are often the ones whose owners were most confident at 8 weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions

When do classes start? June 2026. Register your interest now to be first in line when bookings open.

What age should my puppy be? You can start our program from the first day they are at home. Select the puppy school start date for when they are between 11 - 13 weeks and are sufficiently vaccinated (had their second vaccination)

How many puppies per class? 6 to 10. We keep it deliberately small to maintain quality of attention and a manageable environment for both dogs and owners.

What areas does this location serve? Alexandria, Newtown, Erskineville, Glebe, Annandale, Pyrmont, Ultimo, Leichhardt, Balmain, Rozelle, Forest Lodge, Surry Hills, and across the inner west and inner south generally.

Do you cater for all breed sizes? Yes. The Alexandria facility is well set up for all sizes and we regularly work with everything from small companion breeds through to larger working and sporting dogs.

Is the in-home visit included? Yes, always. We come to your home before the group sessions begin and set up the foundations of routine and environment that make the puppy school itself significantly more effective.

Ready to Register?

Classes start June 2026 at Dogs in Town, Alexandria. If you're in the inner west and you want to give your puppy the right start, register your interest now and we'll be in touch when bookings open.

The Toe Beans Co runs Puppy School across Sydney including Paddington, Zetland, Neutral Bay, and Marrickville. No pain, no fear, no force, no aggression - at every location, every time.