Dogs are what we refer to as "contextual learners" - they learn best in relation to their own environment. According to contextual learning theory, optimal learning occurs when the dog processes new information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them.

With our 'Happy Home' Intensive program (for puppies 8 weeks to 18 weeks of age), your puppy is learning in the environment where most of their "bad behavior" happens.

As a result, the learning curve is shorter, results happen faster and your puppy associates the pleasure of learning and growing to their home turf.

From a training perspective, this is the most elegant and natural way to teach a puppy everything they need to learn in order to blossom into your dream dog!

How Does It Work?

We offer our 'Happy Home' Intensive program for puppies 8 weeks to to 18 weeks of age, either as two two 60 minute daily sessions (one in the AM and one in the PM) or 2 consecutive hours during the day - whichever is best for your puppy.

*Although our 'Happy Home' Intensive program is 2 hours a day, upon request we can add additional time at $25 per hour for up to 8 hours each day.

Our 'Happy Home' Intensive program is usually either a 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 day program where a Karma Dog head trainer trains your puppy in the comfort of your own home.

In addition, with our 'Happy Home' Intensive program, you could be home or not.

It's up to you!

To ensure training sticks, each 'Happy Home' Intensive program comes with a free private training follow up session for every 5 days of training, a free 7 week series of Puppy Kindergarten classes, and a free 7 week series of Virtual classes.

*Minimum 5 day program

Why is this Program More Effective for Puppies than our Traditional Board & Train program?

The reason we recommend our 'Happy Home' Intensive program over our Traditional Board and Train program in most cases, is because when a trainer is working directly with your puppy in YOUR home, they can see exactly what the specific triggers are that are creating their unwanted behaviors, and work to alleviate your pup's responsiveness to those triggers in real-time. In addition to teaching alternative behaviors to your puppy's triggers, they are simultaneously setting them up for future success.

Furthermore, the follow through training on the part of the dog parent is a lot easier of a task since their puppy has already associated the new teachings to their home turf.

Why is this Karma Dog's #1 Recommendation for Puppies?

1. Bonding Process When we bring home a new puppy, the all important bonding process that takes place between you and your pup is a critical time in his/her life. This is also referred to as the developmental stage called the "imprinting period" that behavior specialists regard as being the most impressional time period in a young puppy's life. Veterinarians all agree this is the most effective time to train a puppy.
2. Contextual Based Learning - Dogs are "contextual based" learners and when it comes to dog training in general, training a dog in their own home environment is statistically the protocol that will have the highest probability of success, both short-term and long-term, due to the simple fact that dogs learn by association.
3. Spontaneous Training - Training happens in real time. We call this real time training "spontaneous training". Instead of setting up controlled "training sessions", by having one of our training experts in your home for an extended period of time, we're able to "capture" behaviors as they happen naturally and then reinforce those behaviors so they become what we refer to as "default settings" in your puppy's nervous system.

In conclusion, having the luxury of teaching a puppy all the basic building blocks of good behavior from mastering the potty training process to having excellent leash etiquette to learning to chew on appropriate bones and chew toys in the actual place they live, is usually going to be the best long term solution.

That's why in doing this work for 20 years, we consider our 'Happy Home' Intensive program our ideal program for training puppies.