PUPPY TRAINING

Our puppy training is designed to help young dogs develop the skills, confidence, and communication they need for a successful start in life. It focuses on building good habits early while helping them learn how to navigate the world with confidence and independence.

Every puppy’s training plan is tailored to their age, temperament, development, current skills, and individual needs. We begin by building strong foundations at home, then progress into obedience, confidence, leash skills, and real world experiences as your puppy is ready.

Strong Foundations From the Start

Essential manners, communication, engagement, boundaries, and early life skills before unwanted habits become established.

Real World Exposure

Thoughtful socialization and environmental exposure that builds confidence around new people, places, surfaces, sounds, and situations.

Training That Grows With Your Pup

Developmentally appropriate skills designed to support future obedience, off leash work, sports, working roles, or life as a reliable family dog.

Support for Humans Too!

Owner guidance on communication, structure, reinforcement, routines, and how to continue building on your puppy’s progress at home.

 BOARD & TRAIN PROGRAM

Our Puppy Board & Train program is designed to give a strong, age appropriate start through structured daily training, routine, and real life practice. Training begins with essential home foundations like crate skills, housebreaking, communication, settling, manners, and relationship building, then progresses into obedience, leash work, confidence, social development, and appropriate public exposure as the puppy is ready. Each puppy’s training plan is individualized based on age, maturity, temperament, current skills, and owner goals, with progression focused on building practical skills that carry over into everyday life.

Home Foundations

Housebreaking Foundations

Our Board & Train environment provides your puppy with consistent potty schedules, supervision, crate routines, and clear patterns that help establish better bathroom habits and give owners a system they can continue at home.

Crate Training & Independence

We help your puppy develop a healthy, comfortable relationship with their crate while beginning to build the independence and ability to settle away from constant attention.

Handling & Cooperative Care

Puppies practice becoming comfortable with touch, restraint, grooming, nail handling, ear and mouth checks, and other routine care to help make future vet visits, grooming, and everyday handling easier and less stressful.

Structure & Daily Routines

Our structured environment allows puppies to easily begin learning that everyday life has predictable boundaries and expectations, from waiting at doors and settling when needed to following routines around meals, play, rest, and daily transitions.

Household Manners

We begin shaping appropriate behavior around the home, including reducing jumping, excessive mouthing, demand behaviors, counter surfing, rushing through thresholds, and other common puppy habits.

Learning How to Settle

Puppies practice slowing down, relaxing, and being content without constant entertainment, an important skill for creating an easier dog to live with as they mature.

Relationship Building Games

Puppies learn that engaging with their owner is rewarding, fun, and worth choosing. Through simple interactive exercises, we begin building trust, attention, cooperation, and a stronger. connection that supports future training and communication.

Beginning Communication Skills

Your puppy is introduced to simple markers, leash guidance, following the handler, name recognition, and other early concepts that create clearer communication between puppy and owner.

Preparing for Future Obedience

Rather than rushing formal commands, we focus on the building blocks that make obedience easier later: Engagement, following guidance, frustration tolerance, impulse control, food and toy motivation, and learning how to learn.

Healthy Boundaries From the Beginning

Puppies start learning that affection, freedom, play, and access to things they want can coexist with structure and appropriate boundaries.

A Smoother Start at Home

Our goal is to send your puppy home with better routines, clearer expectations, and a foundation you can continue building as they grow into adolescence and eventually adulthood.

Real World Development 

Solidifying Basic Commands

Puppies continue strengthening foundational commands such as sit, down, place, recall, and implied stay while working around gradually increasing distractions. The focus shifts from simply understanding each skill to responding more consistently and independently, holding behaviors longer, and following through in a wider variety of situations.

Confidence Building

Through carefully selected new experiences, problem solving opportunities, and guided exploration, we help puppies become more adaptable, resilient, and comfortable in unfamiliar situations.

Leash Skills & Heelwork

We introduce leash guidance, handler check ins, directional changes, loose leash walking, and early heelwork. Puppies learn how to move with their handler, maintain appropriate position, and respond to leash communication while building better walking habits before pulling and other leash problems become established. 

Engagement & Handler Focus

Puppies learn to stay connected and responsive to their handler while exploring new environments. Through play, rewards, movement, and short training sessions, we build engagement around people, animals, sounds, and other everyday distractions.

Generalizing Skills

Puppies begin practicing learned skills in different locations and around increasing distractions, helping them understand that expectations still apply beyond the training environment and preparing them for more reliable real world behavior.

Proper Socialization 

Puppies are thoughtfully introduced to new people, environments, surfaces, sounds, and everyday public settings to help them learn how to experience the world calmly and appropriately.

Public Neutrality

Puppies learn that socialization doesn’t always mean interaction. We begin building the ability to calmly observe, pass by, and exist around people and other dogs without needing to greet or engage with everyone they see.

Introducing The Three D's

We begin introducing distance, duration, and distraction so puppies can start building greater consistency and reliability as expectations increase and training becomes more challenging.

Impulse Control & Everyday Manners

Puppies practice patience and better decision making around doors, food, toys, people, exciting environments, and other everyday distractions.

Developing Skills That Last

Training focuses on helping early skills become well established though consistency, repetition, and retention, while building positive habits your puppy can carry forward. Our goal is to create a strong, reliable foundation that makes the transition into the next stage smoother and more successful.

Stay in the loop throughout your pet’s stay with real-time activity updates, photos, and videos through the Walkies Client Pet Journal, so you never feel too far away.

Continue Building As They Grow!

Puppy training is the beginning of the process, not the end. As your puppy matures, they can progress directly into our adult program.

Puppy board & train graduates receive a $300 Training Progression Credit that can be applied to a future board & train.

READY TO GET STARTED?

Every puppy’s training needs are different. We’ll take your puppy’s age, temperament, current skills, and your goals into consideration to create an individualized training plan focused on the skills that will be most beneficial at this stage of development.

NOT READY FOR A BOARD & TRAIN?

WE UNDERSTAND!

Private lessons are a great option for owners who want to keep their puppy at home while still receiving personalized coaching and ongoing support. Lessons can be tailored around your puppy's age, development, and individual needs, while helping you build strong foundations, household manners, leash skills, obedience, and confidence together.