Socialisation for Preschool Puppies
Socialisation for preschool puppies is designed for their stage of development. The best time to socialise your puppy is when they are 8 – 12 weeks of age. And most definitely by 16 weeks of age. This is known as the secondary socialisation period. Once this period ends, your puppy isn’t open to brand new experiences like they once were. The fear response kicks in, making your positive socialisation attempts more difficult, if not impossible.
You want to harness the power of early positive socialisation experiences, but you have a limited time to do so.
That’s why puppy preschool classes are for puppies who are 8 to 14 weeks old on their start date. And why our classes have maximum socialisation opportunities in the shortest time frame. Your puppy will finish their preschool course before they are 16 weeks old – before the golden socialisation window closes.
Our socialisation themes
Socialisation isn’t just dog-dog play. Socialisation is the developmental process whereby puppies and adolescent dogs familiarise themselves with their constantly changing surroundings. It is how they work out what is safe and good as opposed to what is dangerous and not-so-good. Basically, teaching your puppy that everything in the human world is safe and good for them.
Because your puppy isn’t fully vaccinated yet, puppy preschool provides a safe opportunity to have lots of different positive socialisation experiences. We’ll show you what socialisation is, and how to do it effectively with your puppy.
Each of the puppy preschool lessons has a different fun socialisation theme.
- Wheeled objects, childrens toys
- Grooming and vet handling
- Different surfaces and obstacles
- How to greet a dog, people and appearances
- Environmental sounds
What you really need is a dog you can walk down the street confidently. One that isn’t going to have a fearful or aggressive response, freaking out at every dog and person they see. A dog that is happy to be near other dogs and people.
But not a dog that has no manners, so happy and confident, that they’ll pull you towards every dog they see yanking your shoulder out of its socket and causing you much embarrassment!
Would you rather a dog who loves people and other dogs, but can still pay attention and listen to you?
Every lesson we practice our special training techniques to create positive socialisation experiences. Each puppy is catered for, and we go at their pace. We want our puppies to LOVE being around other puppies and people – not simply tolerating it, and definitely not hating it. Of course, we are also teaching our puppies good manners while we do this. We teach our puppies to focus on their humans too.