About The Puppy Center – Bradford Dog Training

The Puppy Center, trading as Bradford Dog Training, does one thing: it teaches puppies, in small group classes, on a tight age ladder. The site calls its approach positive, progressive dog training, and its reasoning is that the window from homecoming to eighteen weeks is critical to how a dog turns out.

The age ladder

Puppy Kindergarten Level One takes puppies from nine to eighteen weeks old on the first day of class, ideally under twelve weeks. It is a six-week course at $250 and covers crate and separation training, nipping, mouthing and biting, polite greetings, coming when called and loose-leash walking, alongside basic obedience and socialization exercises. Tween Kindergarten Level One covers nineteen to twenty-four weeks in a five-week course, also $250, addressing mouthing, polite greetings, house manners and impulse control while building confidence through environmental socialization. A Puppy Level Two class follows for graduates.

How class runs

Classes are forty-five to fifty minutes with five or six puppies, deliberately small. Anyone who cares for the puppy is welcome to attend, including family, friends and pet sitters, and owners are asked to bring treats, a harness, a flat leash and a treat pouch. The first week of Puppy Kindergarten is an in-person orientation without dogs; in Tween Kindergarten the dogs attend from week one.

Health requirements

The vaccination requirements are published in detail rather than left to a phone call: the puppy must have lived with the owner fourteen days and show no symptoms of illness, have a first distemper-parvo at least fourteen days before class, keep boosters current every three to four weeks until at least sixteen weeks, and have bordetella at least seventy-two hours before attending. Rabies is noted as not required until sixteen weeks.

Playtime

Enrolled puppies can also join a once-weekly Puppy Play Class.