Perfect Puppies

18/08/2025

Updated course dates, some sold out, some new dates added. Plan for perfection - learn with an expert 💪🏻🐾

08/08/2025

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06/08/2025

Bringing home a new puppy? Here are weekly puppy training classes in the Cotswolds, plus home puppy consultations, puppy-specific chews & toys. Perfect Puppies.

18/03/2025

27/06/2024

Travelling in style! 🤩

14/05/2024

Is your puppy a fussy eater?

Are you feeding them too much? I know, you're feeding what it says on the pack right? unfortunately feeding according to their weight, age or size is a pretty unreliable guide (it's on the bag because it's required by law) some pups - just like people - need less food than others.

Use this physical body check instead:- put your hands on either side of their ribcage, find your way through their fur so your fingertips touch their skin, now rub their skin back and forth over their ribs.. does it feel like a T-shirt covering the bones? In which case they are the perfect weight! Maybe it feels more like a sweater? In which case they are rather 'well-covered'! Maybe feed a little less. If it feels like a winter coat a fairly drastic ration reduction is required 😬 .

Remember to count healthy training treats and natural chews as part of their daily food allowance, and not extra.

Most fussy eaters are simply fully satisfied by what they are eating, and will always turn their nose up at the least interesting offering, which is often their main food (unless you feed raw..now thats a whole other story! 😁 ).

25/04/2024

What if my puppy is great at home but in class he just wants to play with the other puppies?

Training at home in a quiet, distraction-free environment is a perfect way to help your puppy learn brand new exercises.

But once they have the basics what really counts is teaching them to respond to you with distractions around them, so they will do ask you ask in real life situations which are often busy, noisy or filled with dogs and people.

When you are asking something quite tricky of your puppy (eg. Listening to you in a busy class environment) it's important to adjust your expectations, ask less of them, so they will more easily succeed, but don’t give up.

Training in the class environment is definitely challenging but a great opportunity to train for real situations.

What was your training experience like?

Helen x

25/04/2024

Isn't this just the perfect sky to walk your perfect puppy under? What's your favourite walk spot?

Helen x

24/04/2024

Is there still any point to socialising my puppy early on?

You puppy may look very different from a wild dog, but his DNA is almost identical. This equips him with instinctive survival mechanisms. Being wary of the unfamiliar is a clever way to stay alive in the wild, it doesn’t help much when you are a living with a human family though.

During the period of early development that a wild puppy would be with its mother, she will learn what her environment looks like, what she sees, hears and smells every day goes on an important list in her brain of ‘things that I don’t need to be afraid of’. Once weaned and independent she will uses it as a checklist, anything new is regarded as a potential threat.

Raising a puppy in a human world means broadening a puppy’s definition of what is safe by introducing them to as many places, people, sights, sounds, dogs, as possible so they all make it on to the ‘safe list’. If we do a good job your puppy will also become much more accepting of novelty.

It is much easier on your puppy, and you, to do this when they are very young, hence my recommendation to begin classes early. It is incredibly important to do this socialising carefully so your pup doesn’t get overwhelmed or scared, we cover how to get this right in class.

What was your puppy socialising experience like?

Helen x

24/04/2024

🐕 Was so impacted by this. What a beautiful way honour your dog in their favourite place ❤️ Where is your pup’s favourite place?

23/04/2024

Do you really care if your puppy jumps up? Here's why you might care one day:

Lets be honest, when they are tipsy tiny and brand new, you probably don’t. In fact the opposite is likely to be true, lets face it they are gorgeous! If they put their cute little paws on your shins searching for your attention of course you’ll give it to them, who doesn’t want a puppy asking for fuss and cuddles?!

So imagine for a moment you are arriving at your friend’s house for dinner, in all your finery, and their lovely friendly dog rushes to greet you, you love their dog, but he’s jumped up in excitement to see you and accidentally caught his claws in your lovely clothes.

Or maybe you’re out for an Autumn walk. A super happy hound spots you and rushes over, you smile at her enthusiasm and bend down to greet her. She bounces up onto her back legs boings around like tigger planting muddy, wet paws all over your legs.

(This happened to me recently, and aside from the irritation of being covered in mud, it was a cold day and for the rest of the walk my trousers were wet, yuk!).

This kind of scenario is probably familiar, no-one likes it no matter how much they love dogs, and despite the dogs in question being happy and friendly. So it’s worth keeping in mind that the seeds of this behaviour are sown early in life, when puppies are tiny, fluffy and clean.

Puppies learn fast and easily, they figure out what is fun and do more of it, and you can see how that applies to jumping up. What fun it is getting lots of fuss and attention from humans, and all you have to do is press those magic buttons on their legs with your paws!

The lessons they learn when they are very little will stick with them, remember they have no idea that they’ve got bigger, and muddier, so why wouldn’t they jump up for attention, after all they know it works, its tried and tested.. and fun.

So think about what they are learning right from the beginning, withhold any kind of attention for jumping up (even telling them ‘no’ or ‘get down’ - negative attention is still attention) a good way to do this is just freeze - turn to stone. They will get down quickly, because being ignored is boring. But what is often missed is the reward to for doing the right thing - so fuss, stroke and talk to them the SECOND all four paws are on the ground.

Foster these highly desirable good habits while your pup is really small, it’s much easier for them to learn when they are a brand new and have no bad habits to unlearn.

What has your experience been? Let me know in the comments.

DM me if your puppy has behaviours that need changing 💛

Helen x