The Pup Social

Besides being incredibly entertaining, puppy play provides young dogs with many invaluable learning experiences. 

Besides being incredibly entertaining, puppy play provides young dogs with many invaluable learning experiences.  The socialization stage of puppy development begins at 3 weeks and ends around 14 weeks. During this time, puppies are highly receptive to learning and what they experience positively can shape what they feel confident and comfortable with as an adult. 

Creating positive learning opportunities for puppies involves careful placement of puppies, a sensitivity to their individual emotional states and lots of active supervision.  Puppies bring differing levels of confidence, experience, interest, energy and comfort to their encounters with other dogs and need to be matched with appropriate social partners.

Raising a socially successful puppy also involves more than just having a dog that wants to greet and play with everyone.  Puppies need to practice a variety of skills including the ability to ignore dogs, disengage from play, manage their arousal, play appropriately, and ideally, grow up finding their humans way more fun to play with than dogs!

Dreamland Pet’s Pup Social is a special 45 minute social skills class designed just for dogs 10 weeks – 6 months of age.  A maximum of 2-5 pups attend each class.  Our flexible program offers open enrollment, meaning you can decide weekly whether to attend and only pay for the classes in which you participate.

Puppies can attend the program as long as we have a suitable group, or until they either age out of the program or we determine the setting is no longer supporting the behaviours we want to develop. 

Pricing

$23.00 per class
Classes are 45 minutes

Following your application, a staff member will contact you when we have a suitable group available for your dog. 

Classes run mornings and afternoons each Saturday

Questions before registering?

Please contact us at play@dreamlandpet.ca for more information.

Our Trainer maintains the following certifications:

Your pup will practice:

  • Meeting new dogs
  • Playing with other puppies
  • Engaging and responding to you, even with other puppies around
  • Disengaging from play, which we will cultivate into a recall from play
  • Learning to settle and relax around other dogs (this takes numerous sessions to teach and won’t happen in just one class)

Content varies each class, but you will learn:

  • How to create a positively reinforced interrupter you can use to help your pup disengage from play
  • Techniques for managing canine interactions that do not involve punishment
  • How to understand canine body language
  • When to allow, interrupt or end a play session
  • How to determine which social settings are supportive fits for your dog
  • How a dog’s relational preferences change with age
  • How emotional arousal affects dog interactions and what you can do to help manage it
  • What to do if a conflict occurs
  • How to introduce dogs when visiting or having new dogs into your home
  • How to handle challenging social situations like fence fighting, unexpected off-leash dogs, reactive dogs on leash and what to do if your dog gets “jumped!” by another dog

What to Bring:

  • A 6 ft nylon leash (no flexi leashes please)
  • 1 cup of treats: something your dog LOVES that is the size of a pea, smelly and soft
  • ½ a serving of your dog’s food
  • A harness with a front and back clip (at minimum it must have a back clip)
  • A food dispensing toy like a Kong or West Paw Topple that is stuffed with your choice of food; peanut butter, frozen yogurt, canned dog food are all options
  • A treat pouch: we need to be able to get food into our pups mouth quickly, a sweater with pockets could also work. Pant pockets or Ziploc bags take too long to open
  • A mat, bed or towel suitably sized for your dog on