07/06/2026
Puppy Training session with one of our 8 week old puppies!
The earliest our puppies go home is 10 weeks old as opposed to the more common 8 weeks old. Some will stay even longer for additional training. I like to keep my puppies an additional two weeks for several reasons, but most importantly it's because I like to introduce some training foundations before they head into their new homes.
At 10 weeks old they are by no means a "trained puppy" but they have a good foundation to jump right into training with their new families or in their service dog programs.
Training actually starts as early as 4 weeks but we generally don't introduce individual sessions until they're a little bit older.
These training sessions help prepare our puppies for the human world in which they are about to enter.
Puppies are not born knowing what we want from them or how to navigate our human world. Our rules are very different than the rules of the canine world. And it is our job as their Partners to help introduce them fairly to the rules and expectations of our households.
These first initial training sessions help prepare our puppies to understand what we are asking from them and how to cooperate with us.
This is this puppy's second individual training session. Here our main goal is to teach the puppy how to learn. I'm not using any verbal cues at this point because I just want her to learn how to use her body.
This is a longer session which I cut down for the sake of social media but a typical session will be 5 to 7 minutes. It's not shown as much in the video but I do concentrate on, not only rewarding the puppy for moving into position like sit or down, but also for staying in those positions, reinforcing stability right off the bat.
This is exactly what I want a training session with a 7, 8, or 9 week old puppy to look.
