Natures Menu is celebrating Puppy Awareness Week with hundreds of top dogs across the UK successfully graduating from Puppy School.

Puppy Awareness Week is an initiative which aims to help puppy buyers be aware of how to find a responsible breeder, and a healthy, happy puppy. To mark the special week, Natures Menu has been rewarding top pups with tasty nutritious treats, as well as offering advice to pet parents on responsible raw feeding and how to provide a complete and balanced diet as their pups grow into dog-hood.

The young puppies and their owners have undertaken a comprehensive programme over the last six weeks learning all the obedience basics to give them a good foundation for life. A number of puppies across the UK have graduated including, Layla the Mati-Poo from Hertfordshire, Fred the Cavachon from Gloucester and Rex the Labrador from Kent. 

Alongside Puppy School, Natures Menu offers some top tips for new puppy owners this Puppy Awareness Week:

• Nutrition: Ensure you give your puppy the best start by feeding them a healthy, natural diet.  Natures Menu works closely with a team of in-house vets to design complete and balanced raw meals, cans and pouches, and natural, raw inspired complete dry puppy food to nourish your growing puppy. Raw Puppy Nuggets, cooked pouches and cans can be fed from weaning and include a range of natural, nutritious and wholesome ingredients for pups under 20 weeks of age.
• Immunisation: Young puppies do acquire some immunity from their mothers to protect them during the early weeks. However, over time this fades and needs to be replaced by vaccinations, so ensure you discuss this with your vet to find out what’s required.
• Socialisation: Try and introduce socialising with other dogs, adults and children as early as possible. During this process, they will also need to get used to a wide range of events, environments and situations. Puppy parties run by your vet and puppy trainer are a great way of increasing your puppy’s socialisation skills with some useful training and behavioural tips thrown in too. Puppies can all react differently in various situations and a trainer will be able to advise you on how to handle particular events.
• Reward-based training: During training, food treats will be needed to reward your puppy when they perform desired behaviours. Puppies will work for very small rewards so make sure the treats are no bigger than a small pea to ensure they don’t get full up too quickly and to keep them healthy. Puppies will work harder for smelly, moist food, so Natures Menu’s Real Meaty treats are ideal, made from 95% real meat.
• Patience and praise: Getting a puppy is life-changing and while it can be rewarding, it can also be a challenge. To start with you’ll need to develop a relationship with your puppy, so they build trust. Offering praise to them when they do something good can help this along. Some puppies don’t grasp things straightaway, so it’s important you persevere and keep trying.Shouting, screaming or physically correcting your puppy can have a serious detrimental effect on your special bond and make training difficult in later life. In some dogs, it may even lead to aggression. Always keep training sessions positive with plenty of rewards and seek a professional trainer to help you through those more exasperating times.

Craig Taylor, Managing Director at Natures Menu said: “Congratulations to all of the young puppies graduating from puppy schools across the UK this week. Welcoming a new puppy can be a busy and exciting time and with everything else you have to understand, finding the right diet for your new addition can be overwhelming. At Natures Menu, we like to keep it simple with a full range of raw and natural foods that are perfect for puppies and super gentle on little tums.

“With the help of our team of vets we have put together a feeding guide on weaning puppies onto a raw diet and through our sponsorship of Puppy School, we are working towards educating new puppy owners on the benefits of natural and raw feeding.”

Gwen Bailey, Founder of Puppy School, said: “We’re delighted to be celebrating the graduation of some of our 2018 classes – they should be incredibly proud as they have achieved so much in just six weeks and are a true credit to the tutors and their owners who have worked so hard. We look forward to hearing how they progress after their graduation.

“Working with Natures Menu has enabled us to inform and educate puppy parents on the importance of nutrition and the benefits of raw feeding. I’ve personally seen some amazing results in some puppies and adult dogs when they switch to raw. I’m a complete convert myself after feeding this to my own dogs! They do so well on the diet and wouldn’t feed them anything else now.”

Natures Menu has been creating 100% real wholesome food for pets for over 35 years, and became an official sponsor of Puppy School in 2016 to offer a range of benefits to clients joining puppy classes, including a free advice manual, free treat samples and a voucher for clients to spend on Natures Menu products.