Pet Obedience

Age range: 9 – 20 weeks. Limit of 8.
90-minute drop-off session (owners will not stay with puppy).

We have created this class for owners with active puppies. Our facility is clean and safe for puppies who are not fully vaccinated (we make sure everyone coming has the appropriate vaccinations up to date). Two instructors will train, play and socialize the puppies as a group. During COVID, we know appropriate socialization has been difficult. This gives your puppy a chance to play with other puppies, interact with new humans, and learn some new behaviors (or solidify known ones). Once on the registration site, click on the name of the class for more important details. This class will work best if you bring your puppy weekly.

Age range: 9 weeks – 7 months. Puppies older than 7 months should sign up for Relationship Building Foundations.
One hour each week for six (6) weeks

This is a different kind of puppy class. We will be focusing on building a relationship with your puppy based on trust and respect. Students will learn to recognize the signals that their dog is offering to them and to send signals back that make sense to the dog. While you will learn how to teach your dog basic cues such as sit, down, and come, more importantly, you and your dog will begin a lifelong dialogue which will create a solid foundation for students who want a nice family pet, as well as, students interested in more advanced training with their dog in sports such as K9 Nose Work®, agility, obedience (formal and rally), flyball, and freestyle.

Class size is small. No more than six puppies. Puppies older than 7 months need to join RBF.

We will not have puppies at the first class so that we can talk about all the issues of utmost concern to the class participants. This class will be conducted via a ZOOM call. Past topics have included: biting, jumping, house training, household management (e.g., how do we keep the puppy from chewing everything?), barking, etc. Most students find this first class session to be a most productive time!

Prerequisite: Completion of Puppy Relationship Building
Age range: 4 – 9 months
One hour each week for six (6) weeks

This class picks up where Puppy Relationship Building leaves off. We will continue to build on the foundational skills learned in PRB: sit/down maintain with increasing distraction, coming to you with increased distraction, introduction to heel work, teaching a “go to place” cue, and much more.

Please be aware that there will be no dog-dog social interaction in this class in order to train puppies to focus on you.

Prerequisite: No prerequisites, but we do suggest a 10-minute, no-charge evaluation prior to registration to insure that your dog has no human/dog aggression and will not bark uncontrollably during the class (if you are confident these are not issues for your dog, no evaluation is needed).
One hour each week for six (6) weeks

A fun, relaxed class focused on building a strong foundation of communication and understanding between dog and handler. Students will learn to recognize the signals that their dogs are offering to them and to send signals back that make sense to the dogs. While you will learn how to teach your dog basic cues such as sit, down, and come, more importantly, you and your dog will begin a lifelong dialogue which will create a solid foundation for students who want a nice family pet, as well as, students interested in more advanced training with their dog in sports such as K9 Nose Work®, agility, obedience (formal and rally), flyball, and freestyle. The following cues will be worked on: prolonged sit and down with attention, emergency recall, leave it, sit to greet politely, and loose leash walking.

We will not have dogs at the first class so that we can talk about all the issues of utmost concern to the class participants. This class will be conducted via a ZOOM call.

Work outside of the class will be necessary in order to achieve class goals.

Prerequisite: RBF or equivalent obedience class or permission of instructor
One hour class once a week for six (6) weeks

Take your basic obedience skills to the next level. This class will focus on increasing loose leash walking skills, attention on you; prolonged stays (1 minute sit-stay and 3-minute down-stays), solid self control through high level leave its from food, toys and other dogs, impulse control around people and dogs, fast recalls with distraction, and a go to place cue so your dog will stay on a mat with distractions close by. Come and be challenged while having fun with your dog!

Pre-requisite: Puppy Relationship Building, Relationship Building Fundamentals or equivalent

NOTE: Dogs who bark or lunge at other dogs or people while on leash can NOT join this class. If you have a dog with this issue, the appropriate class is our RBF for Reactive Dogs. 

The first week will be spent at the Training Building reviewing skills in attention, focus and leash walking. The next five weeks will be spent at different locations around Durham/Hillsborough which will challenge puppies and their handlers to walk in increasingly distracting environments. The goal of the class is to develop the foundation skills to help handlers understand what skills need to be practiced to develop successful leash walking habits for a lifetime. This class will zero in on three primary skills to help handlers manage their young dogs as they attempt to negotiate the world on leash.

If a student misses a class and wishes to attend a make-up, one will be offered at the instructor’s discretion. The cost will be 50% the cost of a private lesson. Generally, a make-up lesson will be half the time of a normal class session (e.g., 30-minute make-up time for one missed hour long class).

Outdoor classes will be held in all weather conditions except in unsafe weather conditions as determined by the instructor (e.g., thunder and lightening). Indoor classes will be held unless road conditions are dangerous. Students will be notified via email one to two hours before the start of class, if classes will be cancelled. Please email or call your instructor if you are unsure if class will be held.

If unable to hold a class due to weather (or other unforeseen circumstances), a make-up class will be scheduled. Make-up classes will be offered during the two-week break between regularly scheduled sessions. Every effort will be made to hold the make-up class on the same day and time as the original class, however, if weather or other circumstances preclude the instructor from holding class on that day and time, the class will be scheduled for another day and time.

Whole Dog Institute is committed to protecting your privacy. We will not collect any personal information that you do not volunteer and we are the sole owner of all information collected on this site. We do not sell, share, or rent this information to others in any way that we have not mentioned in this statement.