You just welcomed a puppy into your family, what’s next? 

Puppyhood is a critical time for behavioural development and it is essential to start training your puppy with force-free, humane training methods from the get-go so that they grow up to be well-adjusted.

Here are some key points highlighting the importance and benefits of puppy training and socialisation: 

Bonding and Communication
Training sessions can be enjoyable for both you and your puppy, helping create a bond. Having consistent training command can help establish effective communication early on, helping to build a strong relationship, fostering trust and understanding between you and your pet.

Basic Obedience
Puppy training lays the foundation for basic obedience commands such as sit, stay and come, and also getting your puppy used to walking on a leash. 

Prevention of Behavioural Issues
Proper and consistent training can help prevent common behavioural issues such as excess barking, play biting, chewing, digging, aggression, and resource guarding. Training your pup for the desired behaviour is often easier than trying to correct them later. 

Reduce Fear and Anxiety
Exposing your puppy to various situations, day-to-day items, new places and different people (including adults, children and strangers) can help them become more comfortable and less fearful in various situations. Well-socialised puppies are less likely to develop anxiety and fear-related behaviours. Allowing them to have positive experiences with new people, places and situations can build confidence and resilience in your puppy, allowing them to grow into confident, loving companions. 

Less Reactive
Controlled exposure to other dogs and animals can promote positive interactions and play behaviour with other dogs and help prevent fear or reactivity towards other animals. 

Puppy Training at SPCA
At the SPCA, we recognise the growing importance of proper puppy training and socialisation. We have observed a rising number of behavioural challenges in dogs adopted as puppies and later surrendered to us as adults, with many of these issues stemming from inadequate training and socialisation during their early stages.

To address this, we have implemented a mandatory puppy training programme ($400 for four sessions) for all SPCA-adopted puppies aged 5 months and below. This programme requires pet guardians to be actively present in all sessions. This not only ensures consistency in training but also fosters a positive bond between pets and their guardians. Our goal is to nurture their development so that they mature into well-adjusted and well-behaved companions.