If introduced correctly, dogs do not see crates as ‘cages’, but more as their bed, a den and a safe and secure place where they can go to escape and get some peace and quiet! It can become their favourite place to sleep and a cosy area for them to go to. By nature, dogs like small, enclosed spaces, especially when they feel unsure or worried about something. If you provide your puppy or dog with its own area to escape to, it will happily seek out this area when it needs some time out.

Socialisation is the process by which we try to expose our puppies to everything that they are likely to encounter within their lives. Creating opportunities to expose your puppy to a variety of social and environmental situations is fundamental for your puppy's physical, emotional and behavioural development.

I’d like to take a few minutes to discuss the current COVID19 situation and my Puppy and Dog Training services.

Current advise for England, which came into force from 1 June, is that small dog training classes are now allowed.

Back in March, the Government introduced the UK to Social Distancing measures and subsequently a COVID19 Lockdown. This sent me into a meltdown! One of the best parts of my job, my Puppy School courses, were going to have to stop because running classes in a hall environment was no longer safe for me or my clients. How was I going to continue training puppies that were halfway through their training? How was I going to honour training for puppies booked onto my future courses? How was I going to continue providing support and advice to people that needed it?

That time of year is approaching again. Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas and then New Year. Most of us like these celebrations (I am one of those people), but I still wish fireworks weren’t part of them!

You may well recognise this beautiful little puppy. Her name is Mika. She really is quite famous, but sadly for all the wrong reasons. Mika was stolen while out on a walk with her family, not more than 100 yards away from them. It was an opportunistic crime and one that bought heartache to her family, especially her little human sister. Mika was just 14 weeks old when she was cruelly taken from her family.

Founder and Director of Puppy School and internationally renowned dog trainer and behaviourist, Gwen Bailey, has now developed a great app which can help you train your puppy and solve your puppy training problems with step-by-step photography and videos - it’s like a personal training app for your puppy!

Download Now For Apple

One of the most important things you can do for your puppy is to help it socialise. When a puppy is young, new experiences are approached without fear, but as they grow, puppies become increasingly fearful of new encounters and by just 16 weeks of age, the window of opportunity closes as fear starts to outweigh their keenness to approach.

Puppies need to play, exercise, explore, eat , drink and chew. It’s no wonder they sleep a lot!