FREQUENTLY  ASKED QUESTIONS

We offer our home visit dog training services in the following areas and surrounding villages: Barnsley: Cawthorne, Darton, Dodworth, Tankersley, Hemingfield, Hoyland, Elsecar, Jump, Royston, Cudworth, Hemsworth, North Elmsall, South Elmsall, South Kirkby, Grimethorpe, Worsborough, Great Houghton, Darfield, Wombwell, Goldthorpe, Bolton Upon Dearne. Doncaster: Hooton Pagnell, Barnburgh, Brodsworth, Skellow, Carcroft, Adwick Upon Dearne, Woodlands, Highfields, Bentley, Arksey, Toll Bar, Cusworth, Cadeby, Sprotbrough, Warmsworth, Scawsby, New Edlington, Old Edlinton, Conisbrough, Mexborough, High Melton. Rotherham: Swinton, Wath Upon Dearne, Brampton Bierlow, Manvers, Hooton Roberts, Ravenfield, Bramley, Thrybergh, Rawmarsh, Parkgate, Nether Haugh, Wentworth, Thorpe Hesley, Herringthorpe, Wickersley. Our outdoor one to one training is available in Wombwell, Bentley and Rawmarsh areas. Indoor classes take place in Brampton Bierlow, Mexborough & Sprotbrough. Outdoor classes are held at Cundy Cross or Wombwell.

As we don't work from a single location, we don't have traditional opening hours. For home visits and outdoor one-to-one training sessions, we have a wide range of options throughout the week and when you book with us we will usually ask for your availability and tell you what we can offer based on this. We offer daytime, evening and weekend options. Contact Us to find out more. Classes take place at weekends as well as some evenings. We also run morning classes at some of our locations. Visit our Classes and Courses page for more information.

We offer a wide range of services covering a range of training types and, as such, we know it can be difficult to understand which services best suit your needs. There is no single correct answer to this question as it is very dependent on your personal requirements and the needs and temperament of your dog. For example, a reactive dog who barks at others is better suited to private training than a group class; a dog who is experiencing some difficulties within the home will benefit more from a home visit than an outdoor one to one session. Our classes are catered for all ages and stages of training and cover both general and specific training. Indoor training classes are perfect for general training and we offer outdoor workshops for adolescent dogs, recall training and loose lead walking. We are more than happy to discuss your needs and make a suggestion to help you decide, so feel free to contact us for advice. Here are a few tips that may help you choose: Consider what you want to achieve. If it is a single skill, such as walking on lead, look at our workshops and classes for something related. Thinking about getting a puppy? Start early with our puppy services. We can offer pre-puppy appointments to help you plan, or training from the day your puppy comes home - no waiting for vaccinations to be completed. If your dog is a puppy an adult dog who hasn't had much training and needs some basic obedience skills, our indoor classes are ideal and the choice of class will be guided by your dog's current age. Looking for a regular hobby to learn and do with your dog to give them a job or activity to keep them busy, check out our Dog Sports & Hobbies section. For dogs with a one or more specific issues that you'd like to work on privately, home visits or one to one sessions are best depending on whereabouts the more common issues occur. These can be mixed if necessary.

Puppies are never too young to start training. Meaningful training can begin at around 5 weeks and even before this there is a lot that can be done to help prepare puppies for life with a human. Genetically predisposed to rapid learning at a very young age, puppies are like sponges and soak up everything we show them quickly. However, with youth and inexperience come some challenges. Training a very young puppy can be difficult if you are not clear and consistent with your expectations and rewards. Our Puppy Training services have options that can start from the moment your puppy arrives home, and even before with our Preparing for Puppy visits. Starting your life with your dog off the right way can save a lot of trouble later on. Instead of having to unteach bad habits that have been practised and rehearsed by an older dog, we can teach puppy the correct behaviours right from the start.

For the most part, our answer to this question will always be no. It is never too late to start training your dog, however there are some considerations to take into account with older dogs. If we are dealing with an undesirable behaviour, the amount of time that the dog has been 'rehearsing' the behaviour may mean that changing that behaviour will require more steps and lots of consistency. As an example. an 8 year old dog who has pulled on the lead for many years will take a little longer to train than a 1 year old who hasn't pulled for more than a couple of months. Similarly, when working with elderly dogs, training strategies may need to be changed to account for reduced senses and lower tolerance. However, these are only challenges to consider, and not total barriers to training your dog.

Our approach to training is based on methods that are tried and tested, based on modern scientific studies and designed to give you results that are both effective and long-term, and most importantly safer for you and your dog. We use kind but practical training techniques that include food and/or toys as both motivational tools and rewards to reinforce the desired behaviours, helping to make long lasting changes to your dog's behaviour and teach them to make good decisions. We will also help you to understand the underlying cause of your dog's behaviour and help you learn how to manage and adjust your training so that your dog's wellbeing is at the centre of everything we do. Our aim is to give you and your dog lifelong skills that will make your time together easier and happier. Knowing why your dog's behaviour is like this is key to changing it rather than simply suppressing it temporarily with punishment based methods, so our focus is on helping you and your dog work together as a team and to understand each other. We won't encourage or recommend any tools, equipment or methods that will cause your dog fear or pain, or cause any psychological problems, either now or later on in life. Regardless of your dog's breed or size, we can offer you effective training for any number of problematic behaviours using our proven methods.

We will assess the situation to find out WHY your dog is getting it wrong and adjust the training and the current situation to help them to get it right. We will also help you to understand what is going on so that you can continue the training at home. Dogs of all breeds and sizes can be trained effectively without punishment if there is enough understanding of the underlying causes of their behaviour.

We've successfully trained hundreds of large dogs that have been labelled as 'aggressive' or 'reactive' using only rewards. We firmly believe that all dogs can be trained with rewards. The secret is in understanding what rewards are required in any given moment to help the dog to get it right. This is what we specialise in. Studies over the years have shown that punishment based training gives only short term results and can lead to unsafe outcomes such as dogs becoming defensive and lashing out. We won't just ask you to feed your dog treats without explaining how to use rewards effectively and we won't give you solutions that only suppress behaviour temporarily. We will teach you and your dog how to make lifelong behavioural changes and how to maintain them. Don't be fooled into thinking you need to punish your dog's behaviour because they are a certain type of dog - this simply isn't true. Positive training is safer, longer lasting and more effective regardless of breed. For large, powerful dogs we can also help you to learn how to stay safe with your large breed whilst training them.