Every Inch Elvis - Puppy Perfection Cover Star!

We first met Elvis, a sweet chocolate Labrador puppy, when he came along to our Thinking-Puppy classes. He hadn’t finished his vaccinations at the time, so his family arrived all tooled-up with a blanket — aaaand Elvis obligingly spent most of the class trying to wriggle off it!

From the very beginning, the whole family joined in with the process. What really stood out was the way they took everything at Elvis’s pace. They understood how his puppy brain worked. Nipping, chewing and jumping-up have been there — he’s a puppy. But this normal puppy stuff has been quickly sorted out — a rare achievement in a family with teenagers! He’s lucky to live with two sensitive, thoughtful teens and it shows: he’s a little gem around people.

TEAM ELVIS

Team Elvis were determined to raise a calm, connected, comfortable Thinking-Puppy from the moment they joined us, and everything they did was geared towards helping him flourish. They took each challenge head-on, dipping into our WhatsApp support whenever they needed it. Elvis’s mum asked thoughtful, intelligent questions and we had some lovely conversations about feeding and harness work.

One of the most inspirational things they did was support Elvis through his puppy moments of uncertainty with his harness. They recognised the importance of a well-fitting, comfortable piece of equipment, and although Elvis wasn’t happy with his Perfect Fit at first, they didn’t rush. They took it slowly, used the support we offered, and helped him build calm confidence with it. The result is a beautifully settled puppy who is very happy to wear his harness — a credit to their patience and understanding.

DIET AND CALMNESS

Another big step was their decision to transition Elvis onto a raw diet very early on. We had talked about how diet can affect behaviour, and they noticed a real change once he came off kibble. Elvis became calmer, more focused, and it gave him the best foundation for the rest of his puppy training.

We couldn’t be prouder of Team Elvis. Their commitment, patience and thoughtful approach has set Elvis up to be a calm, confident, happy Thinking-Puppy. He’s a gorgeous boy — and with such an inspirational family behind him, he’s got the very best future ahead!

Thank you to his mum for her beautifully detailed account of their journey with us:

“Meet Elvis our beautiful Pedigree Chocolate Labrador Retriever. We selected him during a visit to a breeder we researched and chose, based in Cambridgeshire when he was around 5 weeks old. Collecting him when he was just shy of 9 weeks old. From the first time we communicated with the breeder until our collection day we received lots of photos, videos, updates, tips and advice. In all honesty, Elvis was already well on his way with toilet training and crate training at this point, which I believe helped greatly. We’re now able to give her little updates on Elvis from his new forever home.

One of the pieces of advice given was to go to puppy training classes as soon as possible. So being the person I am I got straight on this and started researching local trainers and dog behaviourists prior to collecting Elvis.

During this time Fern Ember was recommended to me several time. So I decided to reach out and see what was available for our little puppy who wouldn’t have had his second vaccines yet.

Fern was so helpful and told us he could start sessions before his second vaccines because all puppies are kept separate in their own allocated space to work, being carried in and out individually by owners in an orderly one-at-a-time fashion. This in itself was reassuring: I knew Elvis was safe as were all the other puppies and that we were clearly in safe hands.

We started the 6 week Thinking Puppy course on the 2nd August when Elvis was not quite 10 weeks old.

It has been amazing.

Excellent value for money and our beautiful pup has gone from strength to strength on this journey.

The classes are 45 minutes long, plus you are given access to Google Classroom with all the supporting documents as well as email support for the learning and training targets for the coming week.

The sessions are delivered in a very gentle slow way, which is so important because the puppies can easily become overtired, overstimulated or lose concentration. Out of the sessions Fern is on hand on WhatsApp for any additional help and support. We have utilised this feature on several occasions. Tugging on trousers was the first behaviour I reached out about, tipping his water bowl was the next thing, then Elvis moved onto digging slate in the boarders. Each time Fern was so clear in her responses with how to deal with the behaviours in a Thinking-Puppy way and all were resolved very quickly within days.

We’ve decided to transition Elvis onto a raw food diet, again Fern gave us additional tips and pointers to help with this as did our breeder. We’ve found the raw diet has also played a significant part in Elvis’ mood and behaviour. He rarely has the ‘zoomies’ now and when on the occasions he does it’s connected to overstimulation, but with the Count Down to calm technique, this is diffused and resolved quickly.

We additionally worked with Raquel (FEDB’s Assistant Behaviourist) in a private one-off session on harness habituation and training. We couldn’t get Elvis to wear his harness at all, he just wanted to chew it, we didn’t want to force him and have him develop a negative association with it, so reached out and did a single session with Raquel. It was like magic! He’s happily worn his harness ever since. Raquel is fantastic with Elvis, such a great addition to our journey. We have reached out to her again recently because our biggest puppy challenge right now is Elvis’ walks, he gets very excited very quickly, wants to greet everyone and every dog and can become tricky to calm. Raquel offers additional support with this specific challenge which we won’t hesitate to book with her.

We’ve attended puppy classes as a family of four with Elvis and the children have been welcomed and encouraged to be actively involved in the training strategies. Building everyone’s confidence whilst also creating a consistent joined-up approach to his training.

We still have some days with a puppy that feel harder than others from time to time. We accept this is totally normal and part of the journey, but the training we’ve done has helped us really understand Elvis and his needs, what to do, and so we can confidently say that overall he is a really loving, polite well mannered puppy.

We have enrolled for the next stage of training F2 with Fern and the team because we trust that the system she uses works and we are all in safe hands. “