Your puppy is only a puppy once.

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Those first few months are about so much more than teaching a puppy to sit, drop or walk nicely on a lead. During this important stage of development, they're learning how to feel about the world around them.

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Every new experience helps shape their confidence, resilience and ability to cope with life's challenges. These early experiences influence the dog they become and the relationship you'll share for years to come.

 

That's why the right Puppy School matters.

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At Goin' Muttz, we've reimagined Puppy School to focus on what matters most during this important stage of development - for both puppies and the people raising them.

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Experience That Shapes Our Approach

With more than 9 years of professional experience, a commitment to ongoing education, and a background training and assessing assistance dogs, I've completely redesigned the Goin' Muttz Raising Puppies program to reflect what puppies - and the people raising them - truly need.

 

Training and assessing assistance dogs has reinforced something I see every day:

 

The dogs that thrive aren't simply the ones who know the most cues.

They're the dogs who can confidently navigate unfamiliar environments, recover from challenges, stay engaged with their handler and continue thinking when life becomes unpredictable.

 

Those qualities begin in puppyhood.

 

Everything we do at Goin' Muttz is designed to help puppies develop those same lifelong foundations.

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Our Puppy School is Different Because We Go Deeper

We'll absolutely teach the start to practical skills like recall, loose lead walking and polite manners.

But we don't begin there.

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Before we focus on what we want puppies to do, we focus on how they feel and how they learn. A puppy who feels safe, curious and engaged is far more capable of learning than one who feels overwhelmed or uncertain. That's why every activity in our Puppy School has a purpose.

Through carefully designed games, exploration, problem solving and positive, science-based training, puppies learn through cause and effect. They discover that their own choices create positive outcomes, building confidence, resilience and a genuine love of learning.

Rather than simply teaching behaviours, we're helping puppies become adaptable learners who can confidently navigate the world around them.

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Just as importantly, we'll teach you how to understand your puppy - how to read their body language, recognise what they're communicating and support them through new experiences with confidence.

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When those foundations are in place, teaching the obedience skills becomes the easy part.

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Every Puppy Is Different

No two puppies are the same. Some puppies arrive ready to take on the world, while others need a little more time and support to feel comfortable in new situations.

 

Raising Puppies is designed to meet every puppy where they are. We celebrate their individual strengths while helping them build confidence at their own pace. We don't expect perfection. We simply want every puppy to leave more confident than when they arrived.

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What You'll Learn Together

Puppy School isn't just about training your puppy.

It's about giving you the knowledge and confidence to guide them through one of the most influential developmental stages of their life. Unlike traditional puppy classes that focus primarily on obedience exercises, Raising Puppies: Real-Life Ready is designed to nurture the qualities that underpin lifelong learning, behaviour, and wellbeing.

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We create safe, positive experiences through thoughtfully planned activities that expose puppies to a wide variety of environments, surfaces, sounds, movement, novelty, people, dogs, problem-solving opportunities, cause-and-effect learning, and body awareness. These experiences help puppies develop positive expectations about the world around them and build the foundations for a lifetime of learning.

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Just as importantly, we develop the human end of the lead. You'll gain the knowledge to recognise and create valuable learning opportunities in everyday life, learning to use the world around you with purpose and creativity. Rather than relying on formal training sessions, you'll discover how everyday moments can become meaningful opportunities to support your puppy's development.

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When you create the pathway for positive learning and support your puppy to give life a go, teaching the practical skills becomes the easy part.

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It can be difficult to put into words exactly what we cover. We've condensed more than nine years of education, hands-on experience, and ongoing professional development into a program that goes far beyond a checklist of behaviours or obedience exercises.

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Listing every game, activity, and exercise we use wouldn't be particularly helpful - names like OOO What's This? or The Get It Game don't mean much until you understand the purpose behind them. Instead, we've broken the program down into the key concepts you'll learn. Within each concept, you'll be guided through a wide variety of practical exercises, games, and real-life activities, each carefully chosen to support your puppy's development and deepen your understanding.

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The program is thoughtfully structured across five weeks, combining practical learning with the theory behind it. We don't just teach you what to do - we explain why it matters and how to apply those principles creatively in everyday life. Our goal is to help you think differently about raising your puppy, so you can recognise and create valuable learning opportunities wherever you are, long after the course has finished.

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Throughout the program, we'll explore concepts including:

• Understanding your puppy's brain – How puppies perceive the world, learn, process information, make decisions, and develop emotional responses.

• Reading canine body language and communication – Learning to recognise what your puppy is communicating, how to respond appropriately, and how to hear and action what they are telling you. The more we learn to hear the whispers, the less our dogs need to shout.

• Building confidence, curiosity, optimism, resilience, and calm – Creating positive experiences that help puppies embrace new things, recover from challenges, and develop healthy emotional responses.

• Preparing puppies for the real world – Helping puppies navigate environments, surfaces, sounds, movement, people, dogs, novelty, and all of life's weird and wonderful moments.

• Appropriate socialisation and exposure – Understanding what quality socialisation really looks like and how to create meaningful experiences without overwhelming your puppy.

• Focus, engagement, and connection – Developing a puppy who is present with you, chooses to engage, and can move through life as your teammate.

• The power of your own body language – Understanding how your movement, timing, emotions, and communication influence your puppy's behaviour and learning.

• The science of learning – Understanding motivation, reinforcement, cause and effect, and how puppies learn from the world around them.

• Problem-solving, choice, and independent thinking – Tapping into your puppy's natural ability to investigate, make decisions, work through challenges, and actively participate in their own learning.

• Proprioception and body awareness – Building coordination, confidence, and awareness through purposeful movement and exploration.

• Play, enrichment, and meeting your puppy's needs – Using play and everyday experiences to support healthy development while understanding that meeting your puppy's needs creates the best foundation for learning.

• Training beyond the classroom – Learning how to recognise and create valuable learning opportunities throughout everyday life, using the world around you with purpose and creativity.

• Real-life solutions for real-life puppy problems – Rather than micromanaging every behaviour or relying on quick fixes, we focus on developing the skills beneath the behaviours. Through engaging games, thoughtful concepts, and practical strategies, you'll learn approaches that can be adapted to countless real-life situations while building lifelong skills.

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What's Included

✔ 7.5 hours of practical, hands-on training over five weeks

✔ Small class sizes for personalised coaching

✔ Classes held at Hall Veterinary Surgery

✔ Lifetime access to the Goin' Muttz Raising Puppies Portal

✔ Step-by-step video tutorials

✔ Training guides and practical resources

✔ Ongoing support throughout the course

Your Raising Puppies Portal means the learning continues long after class ends, with video demonstrations and resources to help you confidently practise at home.

 

Our Philosophy

We don't believe the goal of Puppy School is simply to raise a puppy who can sit on cue.

We believe it's to raise a dog who feels safe exploring the world, enjoys learning, is calm and confident in their decisions,  can recover from challenges and looks to their person for guidance.

 

Because when confidence comes first, learning follows.

When resilience is nurtured, challenges become opportunities.

When curiosity is encouraged, the world becomes something to explore rather than something to fear.

 

That's the kind of companion we're helping you raise. One that's ready for whatever life brings.