Teacher's Pet Training Academy

Yes! We love when people are planning ahead for their future family member’s training! Feel free to sign up for class as soon as you know you’ll be adding to your family and a class on our schedule fits with yours. Give us as much information as you know about your future pup, but don’t stress that you don’t know everything yet. If anything changes and the adoption does not go through at that time, please just be sure to let us know as soon as possible so we can re-open the space to others.

A: Short answer: yes! Long answer: yes with some thoughts in mind. We require all dogs to have age-appropriate vaccinations when they start class. For puppies 8-20 weeks, this means their first distemper/parvo/parainfluenza vaccine, subsequent boosters if applicable, and the Bordetella (kennel cough) vaccination. Many puppies are too young to have had the rabies vaccine when they start class but this is okay.

All dogs & puppies who attend classes are required to have age-appropriate vaccinations, so the benefit of socializing and training puppies in a safe environment outweighs the cost of potential infection in otherwise healthy puppies. To learn more about this, check out this article from the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior.

Generally the answer to this question is Puppy Kindergarten if they are under 20 weeks old at the start of class, or Doggy Elementary School if they are over 5 months old when class starts. If your dog has taken an introductory course elsewhere, Doggy High School might be the best fit. Feel free to contact us and ask further if you’re still wondering.

Your dog should be current on (at a minimum) the following vaccinations and have been seen by your vet within the last year.
- Bordetella (Kennel Cough)
- DHPP (Distemper-Parvo)
- Rabies

**We do accept proof of titer tests.

This answer gets more complicated: it depends! If your dog is very timid or shy in new spaces, tends to not like new people or dogs near them, or even shows signs of fear in these situations, then private training is probably a better place to start. We also recommend private training for any behavior modification training, such as leash reactivity, fears & phobias, aggression, resource guarding, issues between dogs in the same household, and more.
If any of these sound like behaviors you’re experiencing, please contact us for more information and we’d be happy to suggest a service to fit your needs.

Nope! If they took a Puppy class with us or elsewhere, that’s a great introduction, but if you weren’t able to take a class with your dog before they were 20 weeks old or have just added an adult dog to your family, Doggy Elementary School is the class to start you off on the right paw.

Dog training is an unregulated industry, but our trainers all hold professional training certifications through a respected third party training council. All Teacher’s Pet trainers are Certified Professional Dog Trainers - Knowledge Assessed (CPDT-KA) through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers and complete continuing education to maintain their certifications. In addition, Sarah, our behavior consultant, is a Certified Behavior Consultant Canine - Knowledge Assessed (CBCC-KA).

All trainers complete continuing education to keep their certifications current, and Teacher's Pet belongs to the APDT, PPG, and Force Free Trainers Of Wisconsin. These organizations hold us to their standards of practice which include not using methods that involve fear, pain, or intimidation on any dog in our care.

Teacher’s Pet trainers are committed to positive reinforcement based training. We pledge to never use methods or tools that cause harm, pain, or fear in dogs. Our methods are rooted in the science of learning theory that applies to all species. We want to make training fun for both you and your dog while showing you how to communicate clearly with your furry friend, as well as how to read the communications they’re offering.

Yes and no. Food is a primary reinforcer, meaning that we need it to survive. Therefore, it is very reinforcing to most animals. However, some dogs are a bit pickier, or are more excited by toys, affection from people, or things in their environment. We’ll utilize whatever motivates your dog to help train, but often food is one of the most effective things we can use to help our dogs learn. Dogs don’t perform behaviors simply to please us, so food is also a form of “payment” for doing a behavior that we want but maybe isn’t the most important thing to them. If you stopped getting paid tomorrow, how much longer would you go to work? We all need reinforcement to continue performing behaviors, otherwise those behaviors don’t have a function. So, we use food in training, but we also talk about how to fade it out where possible for known skills, and use less of it over time.