Puppy visits

The first few months decide the next fifteen years. If you are back at work before your puppy is ready to be left, short frequent visits keep the toilet training on track and stop the day turning into eight hours of alone.

What a puppy visit includes

• Straight out for a toilet break, and praised properly for getting it right
• A short play or a training game. Five minutes is plenty at that age
• Fresh water, and a feed if it falls in the visit
• Settled back in the crate or their own space, calmly, not shut in mid-excitement
• Your training followed exactly: same words, same rules, no undoing your work
• A message telling you what they did, including the accidents

How often

Most puppies do far better on two or three short visits spread across the working day than one long one in the middle. Each visit is about twenty minutes and costs £12.

We will work the pattern out from your puppy's age at the meet and greet, and change it as they grow out of needing it. The aim is for you to need me less by Christmas, not more.

Your rules, not mine

If the puppy is not allowed on the sofa with you, the puppy is not allowed on the sofa with me. If you are using a particular word for the toilet, or a particular way of asking for a sit, I will use it too.

Puppies cannot tell that different people have different rules. They just learn that the rules are negotiable, and then you spend a year arguing about the sofa.

Socialising

Before the second vaccination, socialising happens in arms and in the car: traffic, wheelie bins, the hiss of a bus, people in hi-vis and hats, the noise of the market on a Wednesday.

After it, short positive outings at your puppy's pace. Nothing overwhelming. One bad experience at that age can take months to undo, and it is not worth the photograph.

Puppies I take

From twelve weeks, once their vaccinations are finished. Before that they should not be meeting the world yet, and I would rather wait than undo somebody’s careful start.