Puppy training · Idaho Springs, Colorado
Somewhere around seven months, a puppy who came running every single time will look straight at you and go the other way. We build the foundation before that happens, and we teach you how to hold it when it does.
Forty minutes up the hill from Denver. Currently taking puppies for November.
If any of this sounds familiar
The biting peaks around ten weeks and gets read as a temperament problem. The socialization window closes at sixteen weeks while the vet is still saying stay home. At four months they test whether the rules were ever real, and at seven months they test it properly.
Every one of those is normal, predictable, and much easier to handle when you saw it coming. Most of what we do is make sure you did.
The puppy gets worse as the day goes on rather than better, and more exercise is not fixing it.
You have read six things that contradict each other and cannot tell which one applies to your dog.
The class was fine and nothing really changed, and you are quietly wondering if the problem is your dog.
It is almost never your dog.
What we do
Plenty of people who ring us do not need a program. They need two changes to their week and somebody who has seen it four hundred times to say which two. That call is free and it is where everybody starts.
Eight weeks to five months · Ten days · $2,500
Your puppy comes and lives with us. Not in a kennel run, in the house, on the routine a young dog actually needs.
Days one and two are deliberately quiet. A puppy still deciding whether this place is safe cannot learn anything that lasts, so we let them arrive properly first. Then we build. The crate, the name, coming back when called, walking without dragging, settling while the house carries on around them, and being handled everywhere a vet will one day need to touch them.
Short sessions, six or seven a day, easy conditions first. By day seven we are making it harder on purpose, outside, with distractions, because a behaviour that only works in a quiet kitchen is a party trick.
Then we hand it over, and that takes two sessions. Your timing is different to ours, your criteria are different, and a puppy reads that instantly. Skipping this part is why board and train has the reputation it has.
Five months and up · Ten days · $3,000
For the dog who used to listen. Usually the recall went first, then the leash got worse, and somewhere in there they stopped being a dog you take places.
Nothing is broken. Your dog got old enough to weigh what you are asking against everything else on offer, and for a few months the other things win. That is developmental, it is temporary, and what you answer during it is the answer you keep for years.
Ten days to rebuild what slipped, in the conditions where it slipped, rather than in a room where it was never going to be hard. Recall against real distraction. A leash that means something again. An off switch.
It costs more than the puppy program because undoing is harder than building. A six month old has practised the wrong answer a few thousand times and we have to outvote all of it.
Not sure which, or whether either
Fifteen minutes on the phone. Tell us the age, what is happening, and what you have already tried. You will get a straight answer about which of the two fits, or that neither does and here is what to do instead.
What actually changes behaviour
Sleep. A puppy under four months needs eighteen to twenty hours a day. Most get around thirteen, because somebody walks past and they pop up to check. An overtired puppy does not look tired, they look wild, so the instinct is more exercise and that makes it worse.
Space, earned slowly. A puppy loose in nine rooms has nine rooms to patrol and nine rooms of toilet options. Start with one and expand over weeks.
Being alone, from day one. Ten minutes behind a door while you are still in the house. It feels unkind for about a week. Three weeks of constant company followed by a return to work is the unkind version.
Households that fix those three see a different dog inside a fortnight, before anybody teaches the dog anything. That is most of what a program does, and you can start it this afternoon for free.
Essays
Long pieces on how puppies actually work. Free, and none of it behind an email.
Week three is when you will want to quit
Between day sixteen and day twenty five it comes apart, and it is predictable enough that we can tell you before you get there.
The first five monthsSleep is a training tool
The cheapest fix available, it works within days, and nobody sells it because there is no product attached.
How dogs workYour dog is not being stubborn
The most common misread in the industry, and the word you pick decides what you do next.
About
Training, competing, coaching, consulting. A long run of cases that came in after something else had already been tried.
Mostly working breeds. Those are the dogs that get people into trouble around seven months, and they are the ones we like best.
Puppies are where that work pays off hardest, because almost everything that shows up at seven months was set months earlier by something nobody thought counted.
Next intake · November
Tell us how old they are, what is happening, and what you have already tried. You will get a straight answer about which program fits, or that neither does and here is what to do instead.
We take a small number of dogs at once, so the calendar fills earlier than people expect.
Dog already over five months? Run the six checks first.