Structure & Pricing
Our current (rough) service area is: Brighton, Saltdean, Rottingdean, Woodingdean, Peacehaven, Newhaven, Seaford and Lewes (BN1, BN2, BN7, BN9, BN10 and BN25)
Ours is a structured, three stage, tailored process
We take a structured approach: We assess your dog’s needs, create a tailored Action Plan, and then work with you to implement that plan into your daily life. This approach is considerably more consultative than traditional behavioural training. It is designed not only to help you with your training goals right now, but also to empower you to use your new understanding of your dog’s needs and drives to develop your own games and training strategies – and to be confident and adaptable – long after the training course finishes.
This process works, time and time again. Here are a few of the latest Google Reviews from our amazing clients:
Consultation Call
FREE
A short video call (or audio, if that’s not possible for you – but video is handy so you can see our whiteboard). This gives you the opportunity to see how we work, and gives us an idea of your dog’s needs. It’s your opportunity to ask any questions you may have about the process.
In some cases, we may ask you to take your dog to your vet to check for certain conditions before we continue. The sudden onset of certain behavioural changes can indicate an underlying medical condition, and so we must rule that out before making behavioural assumptions.
Assessment and Action Plan
£85
This happens at your home, which lets us observe your dog in their day-to-day environment. We’ll sit down together and take a detailed history, asking you lots of questions about your dog(s) and any current struggles. We’ll discuss how and why Concept Training works, giving you specific examples which relate to your dog and your situation.
This is an incredibly valuable, in-depth, consultative process – you’ll learn a lot about dog physiology and behaviour, you’ll probably have some myths dispelled, and it will give you practical, real-world, science-based knowledge and strategies that you can start using straight away.
During the Assessment, we’ll create an Action Plan tailored to your dog. This sets out the concepts and skills they need in order to achieve success. This is a simple, relatable, visual guide which we create together, and then leave with you. This is not just another ‘behaviour plan’ – it’s practical and it’s actionable.
You’ll finish this session knowing exactly where you are, and exactly where you need to be. It’s entirely your choice whether you want to start a training course after that – either way, you’ll already be armed with some extremely valuable knowledge and skills.
Tailored Training Course
From £390
On a budget? We are determined that our training is accessible to owners in all circumstances, and so we’re happy to accept payment in instalments
A highly targeted program of one-on-one sessions designed to help you achieve rapid, transformational progress with your most important training goals. These are usually every week, but we sometimes leave a ‘gap week’ – either to give you more time to practice what we’ve discussed in that session, or because of holiday etc.
During each session, we will teach you some theory (the WHY) about your dog’s behaviour, demonstrate games and strategies to change it (the HOW), then make sure you understand the concepts – and that your mechanics are good for any games that you’ll be using for the coming week.
We’ll spend time in your home, in any outside space you have, and out ‘on the road’. You’ll learn The Training Loop, situational management, advanced lead techniques, and more. These are the tools that the pros use, and we teach them to you – our entire purpose is to make you the best trainer that your dog(s) could wish for.
In between sessions, we check in with each other over WhatsApp to make sure that you’re making progress. If something isn’t quite right, we can ‘tweak’ it so that you’re not waiting another week before getting advice and seeing results.
By the end of your training course, you’ll not only see significant progress – but you’ll also be thinking and training like a pro. You’ll understand why your dog does what they do, you’ll have go-to strategies to deal with emergencies, and you’ll have the confidence to help them navigate the world around them in a safe and rewarding way.
Ready to get started?
Drop us a line to set up a call
Why is Concept Training so powerful?
Concept Training has grown out of the last few decades of scientific research into canine behaviour, and it’s revolutionising the dog training world. It goes beyond traditional ‘behaviour training’ – it’s a three-dimensional method of training that takes your dog’s health, environment, history and previous training into account, and creates a Transformation Plan centred around their welfare. It works at the physiological level to modify your dog’s responses to situations, and it teaches them powerful, real-world concepts which they can use anywhere.
Let’s take ‘reactivity’ to other dogs, people, cars, etc. as an example: A traditional ‘behaviour training’ approach typically puts your dog in the specific situation that makes them anxious or afraid, and then tries to modify their behavioural response while they are reacting. This very rarely works, as you’ll know if you’ve tried this type of training. Concept Training grows concepts like confidence and optimism, and teaches real-world skills – like the ability to disengage from stressful events. These combine to create a flexible, resilient dog that can begin to handle any situation calmly and appropriately.
How about ‘recall’ training? A traditional ‘behaviour training’ approach breaks this down into multiple, complex mechanical steps and makes the process fragile and prone to failure. Concept Training teaches proximity – the value of being close to you – which gives you a dog who wants to hang out with you, both on and off lead. This, in turn, makes ‘recall’ a non-issue under most circumstances. It also makes training an ’emergency recall’ far easier – and way more reliable.
Why do we use games to deliver Concept Training?
Questions?
Roughly: Brighton, Saltdean, Rottingdean, Woodingdean, Peacehaven, Newhaven, Seaford and Lewes (BN1, BN2, BN7, BN9, BN10 and BN25). We’re happy to consider areas of East Sussex outside that catchment area (there may be a travel surcharge), and we can do certain types of work via video as well (depending on the situation). The best thing to do is book a consultation call so that we can have a chat about your individual situation.
Concept Training goes beyond ‘obedience’ or ‘behaviour training’ by changing your dog’s physiological response to events and then teaching them real-world skills. It is the modern, science-based, positive-reinforcement way to train dogs. The most effective way to teach concepts is to play games which promote the growth of those skills, and then ‘shape’ and reinforce those skills as they grow, until they are second-nature to your dog. It’s also bags of fun for everyone involved!
Concept Training is not something you do and then forget about – it’s an approach to your relationship with your dog that you adopt for life – which is part of the reason it is so successful. We’ll get you started on a solid foundation of understanding of your dog’s needs and drives, and help you grow your communication and relationship to benefit you both.
It’s often helpful to reassess and follow up with another set of training sessions at a later date, focused on growing your skills and tweaking your approach – based on the progress your dog has made up to that point.
Not at the moment. Outside of a narrow range of behaviours, and then only with a group of very predictable and calmly sociable dogs (i.e. dogs who don’t need to be at a training class in the first place), we see no compelling evidence that traditional group classes with all their distractions actually teach skills which translate to the real world. We prefer to concentrate on building a solid reputation for one-on-one training that works – and keeps working.
No. We do not support the practice of using our own dogs as ’stooges’, as we do not believe it to be in either of the dogs’ best interests. If your dog needs practice being calm around other dogs – for instance, while undergoing training for ‘reactivity’ – then a) we are not prepared to put our own dogs under that amount of stress, and b) this is usually better done with ’natural’ setups anyway.
Payment for each stage (Assessment and Training) is taken up front, at the time of booking, and is due before we start working with you. We will email you an invoice, which you can either pay by bank transfer or by card. We use Stripe to process card payments, which means you can pay securely with a debit or credit card, without needing to save your card details (we never see them).
Great! Please contact us and we’ll do our best to answer you!