I don’t offer puppy classes.
The dog training world is full of scammers and impostors who slap a label of “behaviourist” or “professional” on themselves, hiding behind a meaningless certification from an obscure organization. When you are new or inexperienced, there is literally no way to identify the good ones from the bad without actually taking classes with them.
One of the most popular and widely-spread scams that has been going around for years is puppy classes. Their success is understandable: like most items with a price tag, they play on human emotions. People want to see their cute, clumsy puppies playing with other cute, clumsy puppies. This element of awe and adoration, combined with the promise of delayed gratification—attending puppy classes will help a dog grow up well-integrated into society—solidified the belief that, once you get a puppy, your first official responsibility is to enroll them in a puppy class.
People seeking puppy classes come to me often, and just as often I respond: I do not do puppy classes, and your 9-week-old puppy does not need one. Come back when your dog is fully vaccinated (around 15–16 weeks) and when its body and mind are actually ready to take in what I will teach you.
I absolutely lost some clients to this principle. And yet, my belief is unyielding: baby puppies need to spend time learning who you are, and you—who your dog is—rather than wasting this precious time on useless play with other puppies, potentially establishing habits that you will then spend a dog’s lifetime fixing. Very few people whose dogs suddenly become reactive after the puppy stage realize that puppy classes played a huge role in this behaviour. Likewise, those struggling with attention and recall because their dog just wants to run away and play will blame anything but these mindlessly spent first few weeks.
The uselessness of puppy classes is probably only matched by the creativity of the “trainers” who perpetuate them and the promises they make. No, your puppy will not become better socialized. Socialization is exposure, not chaotic dog encounters.
Likewise, your foundations—recall, focus, sits, and downs—will be much stronger if you work on them in the context of everyday life, using the resources you already have (food, toys) as a reward, instead of outsourcing the rewarding to other dogs.
In addition to despising the false promises and uselessness of puppy classes, I strongly disagree with its very name, because it conveys the wrong message.
It is not a puppy you are hoping to teach—it is a dog. This is a huge conceptual difference. If you replace “puppy” with “dog,” you lose the cuteness, the clumsiness, the all-encompassing forgiveness for a baby creature. However, you gain a clear understanding of an end goal. You start molding a different mindset: that of a person who acquired a canine partner, not a squishy toy. Your goal becomes clearer: partnership between a human and a dog can be fully successful insofar as all the other variables, such as other puppies and other people, are not forced into this relationship.
Therefore, I do not teach puppy classes. I teach Dog Classes. I always have and always will.