Puppy School Neutral Bay, Lower North Shore

A flat lead and a normal collar or harness, your vaccination card, poo bags, and something soft your puppy already likes to lie on. Bring treats your puppy actually rates, cut small, and hold back their meal beforehand so they arrive hungry rather than full.

Leave the retractable lead and the squeaky toy at home. And walk your puppy the last few minutes rather than carrying them in from the car, because a carried puppy arrives at a much higher gear than a walked one.

It changes a lot, and it is one of the main things we work on in the session at your house rather than in class.

Your older dog is teaching your puppy far more than you are, all day, whether you like what they are teaching or not. If the older dog barks at the door, your puppy will. If the older dog has learned that jumping gets attention, your puppy has already seen it work. Getting the two of them right together is a different job from getting a single puppy right, and it is much easier done now than at eight months.

Tell us and we will slot you into the same class number in another block, so you get all four weeks in order rather than skipping one. The four weeks build on each other, so week three in place of week two does not work.

If your puppy is unwell, keep them home. Do not bring a puppy with an upset stomach into a room of part vaccinated puppies.

The second vaccination, done, before your first group class. Bring the card. That is the whole requirement for the room.

Your vet may tell you to keep your puppy away from other dogs until the third. That advice is about parks and footpaths, not about a cleaned, enclosed room of puppies on the same schedule. Waiting until sixteen weeks to socialise costs more than it protects, which is why the class exists in the form it does. If your vet has said something specific about your puppy, tell us and we will work around it.

There are four levels and the current prices are all on the puppy school booking page, along with exactly what each one includes.

The four weeks of class are identical at every level. What you are choosing between is how much one to one time you get in your own home, how long you keep the online course, and how directly you can reach us afterwards. Most families land on the second level, which is where a session at home and the full course access switch on.

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.

Yes. The entry level is the four weeks of class with community support and Public-level Ask Luke. It does not include the online course, and plenty of people start there.

Worth knowing what you are trading off. Class is one hour a week in a room. Everything that actually goes wrong happens at your front door, in your hallway and on your street, and that is what the session at home is for. If budget is the reason, start where you can and step up later rather than not starting.

You have missed the group class, not the boat. The class has to finish by around sixteen weeks because the puppies in it need to be close in age and size. Your socialisation window stays open until six months, so there is still real work to do.

Private Puppy Training is the same program with the group class swapped for more sessions in your own home. Past thirty two weeks it is Adult Dog Training and Behaviourism. Both are on the site.

Yes. On Puppy School, home sessions start at Silver. On Private Puppy Training and Adult Dog Training and Behaviourism, every session is at your address. A trainer comes to you and works on your setup, your routine and the behaviour that is actually happening where you live, which is almost never the same as what happens in a training room.

We cover Sydney within roughly a forty five minute drive of the Harbour Bridge. That takes in the eastern suburbs, inner west, lower and upper north shore, northern beaches and south Sydney. Only the group class brings you to a venue.

Yes, and we would rather you did. The meet and greet is fifteen minutes, free, and there is nothing to sign at the end of it.

Bring the questions you feel silly asking. Most of what people are worried about at eight weeks is completely normal and takes about ninety seconds to answer, and knowing that before you spend anything is worth more to us than a booking made by someone who is not sure.