Puppy Kindergarten

The window that closes around fourteen weeks

The critical socialization period runs from roughly three to fourteen weeks of age. During this window the puppy's brain is building its template for what is normal and safe. Sounds, surfaces, people, other dogs, vehicles, hats, beards, children, vacuums, the front door, the car, and dozens of other categories the dog will live around for the next decade. After about sixteen weeks the brain locks in fear responses and what was novel can become alarming.

That is the reason puppy class starts early and the reason the socialization piece of the work is non-negotiable. A puppy who meets a hundred safe new things in the window becomes a confident adult. A puppy who only sees the household, the backyard, and the vet office becomes an adult surprised by the world. Ian Dunbar's work at Sirius Dog Training is the canonical reference and is on our Recommended page.

What the class covers

Housebreaking, taught as a schedule, supervision, and reinforcement protocol that the household runs at home. Chewing, taught as redirection onto appropriate chew items and management of the environment while the puppy is teething. Care basics, including handling for grooming, vet desensitization, and food and toy acceptance. Foundation obedience, including name response, attention on cue, hand-targeting, sit, and the start of down. Basic puppy manners, including the start of door manners, settle, and leave-it.

You can motivate a dog in two ways, with pain or pleasure. We use a positive reinforcement, or pleasure, approach in order to teach or modify your dog's behavior. With a puppy that choice has the largest downstream effect of any decision the household will make, because the puppy is forming first associations and they last.

Bite inhibition

Bite inhibition is the most important thing your puppy will learn. The phrase is Ian Dunbar's. The idea is that puppies learn to control the force of their jaw before they lose their needle teeth at around four and a half months, and a dog who has learned soft mouth as a puppy retains that soft mouth for life. If a fully grown dog ever does bite under stress, an adult with bite inhibition causes far less damage than an adult without it.

We work this in class through structured puppy play with appropriate playmates, with marking and reinforcement of soft mouth, with redirection onto appropriate chews when teeth meet skin, and with home protocols the household carries out between sessions. The window is short. Once the adult teeth are in, the chance is gone.

About the class

Puppy Kindergarten runs as a four-week group class, with one session per week. The class fits puppies from roughly eight weeks of age up through about five months. Puppies who finish Puppy Kindergarten typically graduate into Basic Obedience, which is for dogs five months and up and runs as a six-week class.

For households who cannot make group class times, the same early-puppy curriculum runs as private in-home lessons. The format is the same positive reinforcement work, sized to the actual environment the puppy is growing up in. Some puppies do both, with private sessions for environmental work in the home and group class for the structured exposure to other puppies and people.

Owners ask these first

Short answers below. Cross-cutting questions on cost, group versus private format, and what we use for training have canonical answers on the FAQ page.