Puppy Training Sacramento

The day they come home. Training doesn’t only mean teaching commands. It means helping your puppy learn how to navigate the world, and that starts immediately. Sometimes puppies come to us younger than eight weeks: foster situations, singletons, dogs found after an accident or a disaster. Whatever day you get your dog is the day we can start helping.

Yes, and you should start right away. Owners get contradictory advice on this, so here’s the key: socialization doesn’t mean your puppy’s paws have to touch the ground, and it doesn’t mean meeting other dogs. It means seeing, hearing, and smelling new things safely. Pop your puppy in a backpack and go wander a store, or pull them around the neighborhood in a wagon. It’s the most fun thing you can do with a young puppy, and it builds a confident adult dog.

Private lessons, always, and we don’t offer puppy group classes at all. That’s deliberate. Traditional puppy socialization classes put your puppy in with whatever dogs happen to be enrolled, and we’re seeing more and more that puppies don’t do well when the dogs they’re meeting aren’t the right dogs for them. Starting private lets the trainer learn you and learn your puppy first. Then, when your puppy is ready to meet other dogs or new people, we build that into a session, at the right time, with the right dogs. Our group classes are for dogs who already have a foundation, and that’s where your puppy graduates to when they’re ready.

Yes — that’s exactly what our dog day training package, Furtastic House Rules, is for. The trainer comes to your home and works with your puppy while you’re out, then sends you a written report or video guide the same day with your homework. It’s a lot of active work, and we’ll set up a solid daily schedule and routine that you’ll need to follow. If you’re brand new to homework and routines, Furst Steps builds that foundation with you directly first.

Always engage your puppy with a toy they can have in their mouth, and if they’re not interested in that toy, find one they are interested in. If they’re overstimulated, overtired, and crabby, help them take a break and self-regulate, whether that’s a crate, a pen, or a quiet spot. Here’s the thing to understand: they’re biting because they don’t know what else to do. Our job is to show them their other options. Read our full guide to puppy biting.

Plan to focus hard on it for the first few months you have your dog. Some breeds are harder than others; toy breeds are typically much harder than larger breeds. The single most important thing is a schedule: make one, and stick to it. Consistency does more than any product or trick you’ll find online. Here’s the potty training schedule we give clients.

Completely normal. It’s a toddler in your house, and expecting no mess isn’t realistic. What works is being there with your puppy, micromanaging in the early weeks and guiding them toward better choices, rather than waiting to find out what got chewed while you weren’t looking.

Yes on both. Crate training gives your puppy a safe place to rest and self-regulate, and it makes almost everything else easier. If you’ve just brought a puppy home and want to work through a puppy program, we can help with crate training directly, or we can walk you through doing it yourself. If you’re gone during the day, crate work can also be part of your puppy’s day training visits.