Perfect Puppy Parent Club
congratulations on your new puppy!
When you decided to get a puppy, we know you had big dreams for your life together. But raising a puppy can be really hard! Here at Smiles Dog Training, we want to support those dreams while we support you and your puppy through our Perfect Puppy Parent Club.
Our Perfect Puppy Parent Club was designed for puppy parents raising dogs under 6 months of age. The right start provides a successful foundation for the rest of your pup’s life!
If your puppy is over 6 months of age, we will generally recommend one of our other services to better meet your needs after you contact us.
Through our Perfect Puppy Parent Club, we help you tackle the big challenges of raising a puppy:
- Housetraining the right way
- Guided socialization opportunities
- Incorporating enrichment into your schedule
- Understanding your puppy’s communication & development
- Addressing concerns like mouthiness, jumping, destruction, and barking
- Preventing behavior problems like resource guarding, reactivity, and aggression
- Skill building with fun, positive reinforcement methods

The perfect puppy parent club
Your initial investment of $175 secures access to an incredible program that will set you and your puppy up for success!
When can I Get started?
Since we utilize only positive reinforcement methods in a humane and fear-free way, you can start with us as soon as you bring your puppy home at 8 weeks!
What is included in my investment?
Every puppy parent that joins our club starts with our Perfect Puppy Parent Guide right after they sign up. As we onboard you into the club, you gain access to your Puppy Preschool materials and we schedule you for your guided socialization adventures and/or an initial 1-on-1 private consultation via Zoom to discuss your goals and challenges, start building skills, and create a customized training plan for you and your pup.
After the initial consultation, you’ll have the option to schedule weekly in-person sessions with your trainer. You’ll also be invited to participate in additional guided socialization adventures and weekly group chats where you can connect with other puppy parents and get your questions answered as they come up!

Our skill building curriculum will be tailored to your pup’s needs, but can include any or all of the following:
- Name Recognition
- Verbal Marker
- Hand Target
- Sit
- Down
- Find It
- Place/Release
- Leave It
- Drop
- Loose Leash Walking
- Come When Called
- Stay
- Settle
After you complete your initial program, you will have access to our Perfect Puppy Parent Alumni resources which includes special pricing to continue training with us, continued group chat support as your puppy grows, and group skill practice classes (seasonal).
Testimonials
Not sure if this program is right for you? Check out what some of our Perfect Puppy Parents had to say about working with us:
Sara is wonderful at recognizing why the dog is behaving the way it is and has the innate ability to help you work through it in the best and most positive manner! I highly recommend Sara as one of the best trainers we have ever worked with! She is amazing!!
Karen F.
Sara approaches each pup and their owners in a unique and authentic way! We started training with Sara when we first got our puppy in the pandemic and wanted to use positive reinforcement training but didn’t know where to start. Sara saved our lives! She is endlessly patient, kind and generous with her time and knowledge. We learned way beyond a set of commands. We learned how to really understand our pup and communicate with her in a way that works for all of us. Sara is the ultimate dog translator. She helped bridge the language gap between us and our pup and is truly a life saver. We are beyond grateful for the relationship we now have with our pup!
Jaycee G.
Sara has been so fantastic with all of our pups! We were introduced when we adopted our 2nd dog to help with our first dog. Sara goes above and beyond and the extra mile to make sure you understand your dog and helps you to succeed to create a happy and healthy puppy home.
Brad T.

F.A.Q.
Common service and training questions.
Reward-based training is not a “free for all” for your pet! Every behavior your pet does is motivated by something – emotions or basic needs. We teach you management techniques to prevent inappropriate behaviors and use reward-based training with your pet to teach them more appropriate behaviors. Ignoring behaviors can be equally detrimental to the process because it means we are ignoring those emotions or basic needs. Instead, we revisit our management techniques to change what wasn’t working so your pet is set up for success in the future. You can read more about our training philosophy and ethics here.
Trainers love to use food as a reinforcer in training because food is a powerful motivator for most animals. Whether or not an animal takes food during a training session also tells us a lot about their emotional state and whether we’ve designed the session to be conducive to learning. However, we have worked with dogs and cats in a variety of situations where food was not the strongest motivator for that situation. We focus on teaching you and your pet, and the rewards used are based on your pet’s specific needs.
Our goal with training is to introduce other real-life rewards (praise, petting, play, opportunity) to pets as soon as possible in the learning process. Our main goal is to improve the human-animal bond between you and your pet. This bond tends to “blow open” your pet’s capacity to learn from you, and the bond itself can ultimately become the reward. Using food in early training builds the foundation for using real-life rewards later once behaviors are well-established!
There are a lot of different reasons why an animal doesn’t take food in a specific situation. The food may not be interesting enough or the situation too stressful. The animal may have recently eaten or thinks tennis balls are so much more exciting than hot dogs! It is our job to help you figure out why food isn’t a motivator and adjust accordingly.
Again, this depends on your pet’s preferences! We’ve used chicken, beef, turkey, sardines, carrots, blueberries, hot dogs, cream cheese, string cheese, easy cheese, wet food, chewy treats, crunchy treats, tuna, peanut butter and even just kibble to work with animals. Every animal is different. It is important to try a variety of food reinforcers to determine their value in your pet’s eyes. You may think veggies are a treat, but if your dog just finds them to be so-so then you need to find something more exciting!
When using food as a reinforcer during training, it is important to keep the rewards very small so your pet doesn’t fill up right away and looks forward to more training later. Training practice should be done in short spurts throughout the day, and you can modify your pet’s regular meals to accommodate the additional food they receive during training.
Behavior is fluid and based on your pet’s motivations. There is, unfortunately, no cookie-cutter recipe for training and behavior modification. Each case is unique and heavily dependent on owner commitment to training and management. We can, however, guarantee to provide you with scientifically based knowledge and techniques for training, as well as a commitment to ensuring client satisfaction.
We know people are sometimes surprised that we don’t offer individual sessions for purchase, and we like to be transparent about why. Dog training is a lot like fitness training – it takes time and effort to get the results you want. When we first started, we offered individual sessions and ended up working with most clients for at least four sessions anyway (at their request!). The clients that only wanted a single in-person session were looking for that “magic pill”, and that’s just not what we offer (or what any reputable trainer should offer). We want to provide a training experience that is successful and long-lasting, and we built our services to provide just that!
We are happy to work with clients regarding partial refunds when we decide together that our program isn’t a good fit for a pet parent. Since training and behavior modification success is dependent on owner commitment to training and management, we are unable to provide refunds for any services already provided.