Queanbeyan Veterinary Hospital

Our highly trained veterinary nurses run puppy classes throughout the year. Socialisation classes are for puppies between 8 to 16 weeks of age. Puppies have a small window of time during brain development when they are most impressionable. For puppies, this critical period is during their first 16 weeks of life.

Therefore the quality and quantity of what they experience will have a huge impact on their future personalities and determine the formation of many of their “good” or “bad” behaviour tendencies.

As soon as your new puppy comes home it is important that you provide them with a large amount of high quality socialisation and schooling. This is the key to creating a socially self-confident, well-behaved puppy that is strongly bonded to you. It is also the key to preventing yappy, shy and/or aggressive behaviours later in life. What they learn at this age is permanent, so this is a perfect time to start training and to make it fun.

This is the time to introduce the puppy to different people, places animals, strange noises and sounds in a positive non-threatening way.

Our puppy school helps to teach and introduce you and your puppy to these different stimuli. Socialisation plays a big role in your puppies development and is one of the class focuses.

By hosting the puppy class at our clinic it helps to teach your pet that a trip to the vet can be enjoyable and fun. Your puppy gains exposure to all sorts of different people, as well as other puppies of different breeds and sizes. This exposure will help your puppy to tolerate a range of animals and people as they mature.

Understanding our dogs and what their behaviour means is important in helping your dog develop. During puppy class we will teach you the common signals given to us by our dogs, what they mean, and how we should act on these. It is also significant to understand the different types of aggression displayed from dogs, which can help us to trouble-shoot issues before they become a bigger problem or to know which dogs are appropriate for your puppies to play with.