Young dogs class – also known as the wild and excitable!

Nearly everyone will have a dog which at some point turns into a wild beast!  Commonly these are adolescents who have forgotten everything you have ever taught them, any dog that is wild and over excitable, or dogs who you just can’t seem to get through to any more…

So, we designed this class with these dogs in mind!  This class is all about teaching self-control, working with distractions, addressing frustration and getting your dog to listen to you!

We teach real life skills, through our mastery curriculum. This introduces various strands that we work our way through, ensuring that the dog has mastered each step before we make it harder. These strands are:

  • calm behaviour and calm greetings
  • foundation skills
  • survival skills
  • control skills
  • problem solving
  • targeting
  • behaviour

Since the Lead trainer is an APDT trainer (01236), we offer the APDT Good Companions awards which we begin to teach in this class.  You can find out what is involved by clicking here. These are taught and assessed during the term and are entirely optional – if you dont wish to be assessed for them, you can opt out.

Many people choose to stay in this class for a few terms so that their dog can consolidate and then extend their learning. The curriculum in this class caters for dogs who have undertaken differing amounts of training.

Each week, we work with some of the strands, slowly building secure learning and then adding distractions.  We teach FOR a situation and not IN the situation!

This class is builds on from the puppy class but you don’t need to have attended that to join this class – the mastery curriculum will stretch and develop those we have already worked with, whilst allowing new dogs and handlers to get started with us.

This class has a lesson and handouts sent out each week to help you teach your dog at home. One week of the term is an online lesson with handouts so we can make 1 to 1 individual calls or Zoom video chats to each handler to offer personalised support.

What style of training do we use?

In all our classes, we use an evidenced based, positive approach to teaching you and your dog. This is based around modern research and does not involve any approaches which are considered to be aversive and punishing for your dog.

What about my specific problems?

Like our other classes, although we teach you as a group, we work alongside you and your dog to set you specific tasks to address your problem areas.

We always recap on the previous weeks tasks to see what progress you have made, and alter your targets to help you further if you need it, or we will set a more advanced task to stretch you both further…