Natures Menu and Puppy School are celebrating as groups of puppies across the UK successfully graduate from puppy training.

Puppy School has a network of training classes across the UK for puppies and pet parents, offering help, support and advice on how to train your puppy. Groups of over five puppies, including Cavalier King Charles cross Poodle, Honey, Beagle cross Springer Spaniel, Bella and Miniature Daschund, Oscar and their owners have completed a comprehensive programme over the last six weeks learning obedience basics to give them a solid foundation for life and to graduate from Puppy School.

To mark their success, Natures Menu has been rewarding the top pups, with tasty, nutritious treats as well as offering advice to pet parents on responsible raw and natural feeding and how to provide a complete and balanced diet as their puppies grow into dog-hood. 

Alongside Puppy School, Melanie Sainsbury, Natures Menu Veterinary Education Manager, also offers some top tips for new puppy owners:

• Life Lessons: 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 School classes 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 Puppy School trainer will be able to advise you on how to handle particular events.
• Training for Life: 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 natural not sugar based and 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.
• A sense of safety:  Young puppies need a safe place to call home as well as an attachment figure who is with them most of the time who can help them feel safe, protect them from frightening experiences, guide them and help them to navigate an unfamiliar world.  In a busy family, giving your new puppy a bed of their own which is off-limits to children, can make a real difference to a puppy’s wellbeing, as can having a special human who is never cross or too busy to attend to essential needs each day.
• 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, 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.

Craig Taylor, Managing Director at Natures Menu, said: “Congratulations to everyone graduating from Puppy School’s across the UK. Responsible puppy ownership and nutrition is essential to wellbeing, and Puppy School is a great initiative which highlights the importance of both. The addition of a new puppy to the family is an exciting but busy time for any pet parent and finding the right diet for your new addition can sometimes be overwhelming. We like to keep it simple at Natures Menu with a full range of raw and natural foods that are perfect for puppies and gentle on their small stomachs.

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

Gwen Bailey, Founder and Director of Puppy School, said: “We’re delighted to be celebrating the graduation of some of our 2019 classes. The puppies have worked incredibly hard and are a true credit to their owners, 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.”

Natures Menu has been creating ‘real in every way’ food for pets for over 38 years and became an official sponsor of Puppy School in 2016 to offer a range of benefits to clients joining puppy classes, including a ‘Puppy School Welcome Pack’ which includes a free advice manual, exciting money off vouchers and tasty samples from Natures Menu.

To find out more about feeding your puppy the 100% wholesome and natural way, visit www.naturesmenu.co.uk  or ask your Puppy School tutor for more information.

For more information on Puppy School and training classes visit: http://www.puppyschool.co.uk/