Perfect Puppies

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! 😁 ).

13/05/2024

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

23/04/2024

"Is my puppy too old for training?"

You can definitely teach an old dog new tricks!

So no puppy is ever too old to be trained, however my group puppy classes are for puppies up to maximum 6 months (on date of first class) so to help you with an older puppy we would work on a one to one basis.

This usually works best as you will likely have some specific issues to work on and we can focus on those this way.

What do you wish your older puppy could learn? Let me know in the comments 😁

DM me with any questions 💛

Helen x

22/04/2024

Is puppy socialising dangerous? Should it be done?

When you think of socialising your puppy with other dogs and puppies, think of the way we all learned our social skills as children - through socialising.

At playgroup, at school, at birthday parties, you practice by being in a situation requiring interaction with other children and trial and error teaches us the rest.

It is, however, supervised. There is always an adult on hand to intervene if someone's hair gets pulled or someone stands in the cake. Without adult supervision it would quickly deteriorate into noisy, sugary, messy carnage.

Puppy socialising is no different. Whilst it is critical in order to successfully live in a world filled with other dogs (12 million in the UK alone), it needs to be done well, and with adult supervision.

For example in puppy class, three or four puppies are allowed short off-lead play sessions. I supervise these very closely, interrupting play that doesn't represent behaviour you would want to be learned or repeated, and protecting the little or less confident ones who need more time and space to learn.

Conversely, situations in which I would counsel caution are where there isn't expert supervision, often these are large groups and very mixed ages.

The problem in these situations is generally the unwanted behaviours go unchecked and are practiced and therefore repeated.

Boisterous puppies get to be rather wild and thuggish, rather than practicing moderating their play according to their playmate, timid puppies are overwhelmed and frightened, they feel in danger and often end up running, barking, or yelping to rid themselves of their new 'friend' and this can become their reaction to all dogs.

So let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, puppy socialisation is a critically important part of their healthy development, but advocate for them, protect them, temper them, watch them, and remove them if needed.

Good experiences should be stacked up like pancakes, poor experiences should be avoided at all costs.. they will eat your pancakes.

DM me if you'd like to join our classes or walks.

Helen x

22/04/2024

"My puppy isn’t toilet trained. Can I still come to class?" All the pups in class are very young and still learning about where to go to the toilet.

In a busy and exciting class they often get caught short, or maybe you don’t notice their signals because you are concentrating.

So I absolutely expect a few puddles or piles!

The floor is hard, I have a mop and bucket on hand, and its a normal and expected part of having a room full of puppies so nothing to worry or be embarrassed about at all.

We’ll talk in class about how to manage toilet training when you are away from home 👍

DM me if you have anymore questions 💛

Helen x

18/04/2024

"Is my puppy too young to start classes?" No, and here's why:

Start as young as possible. Very outdated advice would have believe you should wait until your puppy is ‘a bit older’.

This comes from a time when dog training was harsh and punitive, therefore it was considered too cruel for puppies.

20+ years ago veterinary advice was to ensure your puppy had both vaccinations and had waited one or two weeks after that before coming to training classes, research has shown that puppy immunity remains high from its mother and through the vaccination process, whilst other studies demonstrate the overwhelming benefits of early socialisation as well as training (see below for more).

Consequently puppies may now start classes after their first vaccination, this policy was made in consultation with local veterinary surgeons and is vet-endorsed.

(Remember that the classes are indoors, so no different from taking your puppy to the vet surgery, or a friend's house).

DM me if you have any more questions 💛

Helen x

18/04/2024

Does your pup dance around just out of reach refusing to be captured?

Annoying isn’t it!

The thing is we have taught them to do this, by mistake of course, but you will already know how easily puppies learn, both the things you want them to know.. and the things you really don’t!

They watch, they notice, they remember, the things that are fun for them (and do more of those) and the things that are no fun (they like to avoid those!).

So they will have noticed the small differences in your body language when your intention is to capture them and put them back on the lead, because they would prefer to be free to run and play.

When they see these little signs in you they dart out of your reach (it makes you realise how incredibly fast their responses are) which is stage 1 of this process.

Stage two of this process is the ensuing dance between you. They dart back, you reach forward, they run a little further out of reach, you follow and try again to grab them.

For you what is happening is that you are growing frustrated, thinking about the time and that you need to leave.

For them what is happening is they have accidentally discovered how to get their human to play a splendid game of chase!

Think about it from their perspective, they suddenly have your full attention, you are totally focussed on them, you move when they move, you respond beautifully to their attempts at evasion, its super fun for them, especially because they will almost always win!

It’s not malicious, manipulative or ‘naughty’, they are just playing a fun game.

So lets take the game away, and teach them something instead. A tiny but vital piece of training for every puppy is learning to be captured, to accept having their collar or harness held while they are put back on the lead.

That is the end goal, so how to we get there?

Start at home, where there are no distractions and no memories of the fun chasing game. Offer a treat you know they love, and when they sniff it bring it slowly towards you so they follow.

Hold tight to the treat, don’t give it to them yet. Keep the treat close to you and slowly reach out and very gently hold their collar (underneath their chin is best - no pup likes a hand reach over their head).

Feed the treat while you are holding their collar, then release them. The aim of this training game is to teach them they can have the treat if they allow you to reach out and take hold of their collar.

Practice for a few days, and once you can easily do this in your home and garden start practising on a walk.

It’s super important that you practice when you don’t want to put them on the lead, we don’t want to give them any reason to avoid you, this should be a fun came that just gets them treats then release.

Finally, when you have instilled this new learning and replaced the chasing game with this fun training game, you can use it to put them on the lead at the end of a walk.

But keep a sprinkling of practices going during your walk too, so they cannot predict whether its a practice, or back on the lead time.

What have you done in this scenario?

Helen x

18/04/2024

"My puppy has never been on a lead/out of my home/met other puppies. Can I still come to class?"

It is my intention and hope that your puppy comes to classes nice and early in their life, so it is very common that the class is their first time on a lead, out of the house, meeting other dogs, etc.

This is great! I can help you ensure it is a comfortable learning experience for them, and it will give you and them a massive head start in their training and socialising.

DM me with any other questions💛

Helen x

17/04/2024

How to do Puppy Socialising well:

When you think of socialising your puppy with other dogs and puppies, think of the way we all learned our social skills as children - through socialising. At playgroup, at school, at birthday parties, you practice by being in a situation requiring interaction with other children and trial and error teaches us the rest.

It is, however, supervised. There is always an adult on hand to intervene if someone's hair gets pulled or someone stands in the cake. Without adult supervision it would quickly deteriorate into noisy, sugary, messy carnage.

Puppy socialising is no different. Whilst it is critical in order to successfully live in a world filled with other dogs (12 million in the UK alone), it needs to be done well, and with adult supervision.

For example in our Puppy Walks and puppy class, three or four puppies are allowed short off-lead play sessions. I supervise these very closely, interrupting play that doesn't represent behaviour you would want to be learned or repeated, and protecting the little or less confident ones who need more time and space to learn.

Conversely, situations in which I would counsel caution are where there isn't expert supervision, often these are large groups and very mixed ages. The problem in these situations is generally the unwanted behaviours go unchecked and are practiced and therefore repeated. Boisterous puppies get to be rather wild and thuggish, rather than practicing moderating their play according to their playmate, timid puppies are overwhelmed and frightened, they feel in danger and often end up running, barking, or yelping to rid themselves of their new 'friend' and this can become their reaction to all dogs.

So let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, puppy socialisation is a critically important part of their healthy development, but advocate for them, protect them, temper them, watch them, and remove them if needed. Good experiences should be stacked up like pancakes, poor experiences should be avoided at all costs.. they will eat your pancakes.

DM me if you'd like to join our classes or walks.

Helen x

16/04/2024

How many treats can my puppy have?

Actually the answer isn't a number, a weight. Its all about quality.

What would you consider a 'treat' for yourself? or for your children? Chocolate? Ice-cream? This is why we tend to worry about giving puppies too many 'treats', we limited them, enjoying only occasionally.

So let's think about your puppy's treats as rewards instead.

You are simply feeding your puppy, creatively dividing their daily nutrient requirements across the day, sometimes fed from your hand in training practice, sometimes from a puzzle toy, or a chew, and the rest in their bowl.

What does a nutritious reward look like? Think pieces of meat, for example the Paté on my store page, it cubes perfectly into bite sized training treats, is just pure meat so super healthy & because its fresh and soft its super appealing to your puppy.

Chews in my store should be thought of the same way, they are all simply air dried, so to a human, jerky really. Canines naturally eat the whole of their prey, and derive a variety of nutrients from different parts, so the ears, and feet and tendons and ligaments are super nutritious, as well as entertainment and distraction.

Take care when choosing your food rewards and chews though, they're not all created equal. Cheaply made, poor quality products still abound. They are often full of nasty ingredients, heavily processed, or both. Read the ingredients, if anything doesn't sound like food to you, or you don't know what it is, or it's a number, walk away. Consider also the provenance, products made from animals raised in the UK or Europe on the whole will have higher welfare standards than, vs products from EG China.

So.. what we think of as treats are not treats at all, it's simply your puppy's food, and it definitely doesn't need to be delivered in a bowl to count as food. Cleverly dispense your puppy's food throughout the day in as many different way as you can think of, and not only will it be reward for training, it will also be entertainment, distraction, exercise, and mental challenge.

Bonus: They all burn energy so your pup will be more satisfied and able to rest.

What are your pups favourite treats?

Helen x