The Ruly Bully
Helping dogs have more fun with their humans!
We started using Puppr years ago after we got Goomba, our first dog. We thought learning tricks would be a fun way to improve our bond and give him a better idea of what behaviors we wanted in specific situations. Our goal was to teach Goomba a variety of behaviors that would be fun for us and him while keeping the learning phase fun for him. One of the first behaviors was a solid leave it command, which was great while we were still working on dog proofing our fence!
We landed on the Puppr app because of the large variety of different categories and lessons that provide many options for you and your pup. Unlike some other free dog training apps, Puppr’s free tier is completely usable, so you can get a good feel for training and if you like the Puppr app. We think this is a much better option than a 3 or 7 day trial which forces you to sprint through and to determine if it is worth the cost.
Here at The Ruly Bully, we only recommend or review services or products that we have used for an extended time, since we feel it takes more than bumbling around for a few minutes to form an opinion. We’ve been using Puppr for over 6 years now!
We’ll be going into detail about some of our favorite features, but wanted to touch on some first impressions we had while using the app.
To start, Puppr recently got a design update. We’re usually mildly resistant to “upgrades” but actually liked Puppr’s immediately. Their recent update brought a lot of features to a more intuitive location and kept the unchanged ones in the old locations.
We love the clean interface and most of our favorite apps have the same uncluttered feel. If you make a great product, you don’t need to constantly harass the user about upgrading to be successful. Puppr takes this to heart and I don’t remember seeing a single ad on their app, even with their freemium model.
It’s much easier to focus on what you’re doing without being assaulted with pop-ups, ads, and other notifications. All the buttons are easy to use with a readable font. From our end, it looks like Puppr’s goal was to make the app as easy to use as possible.
The way the app teaches behaviors is one of the primary reasons we love Puppr. To start, you’ll see a video of the behavior as an example. Under that, you’ll see a difficulty rating described between 1 to 4 bones, with 4 bones being the hardest. This rating is extremely helpful when starting off to help you understand how much effort teaching the behavior takes. If it’s your first time trying to teach your dog a behavior, we recommend starting off on the lower end (1 or 2 bones).
Puppr’s instructions break down the criteria into small steps. We find this approach the most helpful, especially for beginning dogs and humans, to help keep you motivated. After the steps, there’s a small tips section to help with the harder behavior and provide a bit of troubleshooting in case you’re having issues.
Below the difficulty section in a lesson, there’s a status dropdown menu. This will allow you to choose between not in progress, in progress, or mastered to help keep track of your pup’s progress. If you select in progress, this will move the lesson to a display at the top of your home screen. We find this very helpful to avoid digging through lessons to find lessons that are in progress.
The other option is to use the bookmark icon at the top of the lesson. This will move it to a saved section at the top of your home screen, right below the in progress section. We use both features, but you can use either or both!
We really like having both sections as the first items you see on the home page. Previously, we would have to find or search for the lesson that we started. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, but now it’s extremely convenient and we’re big fans of the upgrade!
Puppr has a lot of outstanding features, but we wanted to detail a few that are the most useful to us.
As a multi dog household, being able to track multiple dogs on the same app was a requirement for us. Puppr makes this process extremely easy and uses a profile setup. All you have to do to swap between profiles is select the arrow next to your dog’s name. This will allow you to swap between your pups in case they aren’t progressing the same on every command. For example, Goomba is a pro at roll over and Primmie wants no part of it.
Adding a dog is easy, as well, with only 5 simple questions to complete bringing your new pup up to speed.
Another feature that we like is the community challenges portion of Puppr. It’s a fun way to share photos of your pup successfully performing behaviors you taught them! Typically, they offer beginner, intermediate, and advanced skill options, which means even if you’re just getting started, there’s likely a behavior your dog knows or you can teach them.
You can also browse other people’s entries and give them bones (likes) or a comment if you think their photos are cute or impressive!
Puppr uses a marker-based training method, which is excellent for beginners and advanced users. We find this style of training the easiest to use and it provides flexibility with how you train. We typically use verbal markers now, but started using clickers as markers initially.
Puppr can double as a dog clicker app with their built in clicker feature! It’s front and center on the bottom of every screen. No moving buttons, second prompts, or other options. It simply recreates the noise of a clicker. We love this design since it provides minimal opportunity to miss the button, even if your hands are full of dog treats.
One reason we recommend clickers for marker-based training is that it is extremely easy to load the clicker. Loading the clicker means teaching your dog that the clicker noise results in a reward for a desirable behavior. If you don’t enjoy using the clicker, it’s simple to transition to an alternative noise or a verbal cue, especially after your dog understands the clicker.
If you’d rather have a manual clicker, any clicker will work. We like the Frisco training clicker from Chewy, but most dog supply stores will offer a variation.
Admittedly, the in app reminders feature isn’t flashy, but we still find it useful. We find it the most helpful to get yourself (and your pup) into a routine, especially when you’re just getting started training. If you’re not into having lists, we find it’s a great check in to make sure you train.
We haven’t used the potty reminder, as both of our pups were potty trained when we got them. We think it would be useful though, as we don’t enjoy having (multiple) alarms on our phones. It’s much less annoying and just as helpful to set up multiple recurring notifications, especially since you don’t have to configure them every day.
Puppr’s chat feature is a lifesaver when you’re having difficulty with teaching a behavior. Although it’s a Puppr premium feature, it can save you hours of researching how to work past an issue. Puppr’s chat can help quickly and efficiently get the help you need. Whether you are teaching your dog how to use an agility tunnel or crate training your dog, their chat can help you avoid frustration and keep you moving forward in your dog training goals!
Having great features is helpful, but our goal here is learning how to teach a dog tricks! Puppr’s lessons are easy to follow and have actionable steps, which we find makes it easier to learn. We’ll be showing you Puppr’s lesson on spin, one of our dogs’ favorites and a great place to start. Primmie will be our model for the spin behavior.
You can see the easy steps that they break this down into. They’ll help you fade the lure during the process, which helps make sure your pup can perform the behavior for the reward, not because of it. We like the “9 out of 10 times” metric for moving to the next step. It’s an objective way to determine whether your pup knows the behavior, which takes the guesswork out of the process.
Here is Prim demonstrating the steps to spin. Primmie is high food drive, which makes the luring process easier for teaching behaviors. If your dog isn’t as interested in treats, try using toys or doing your training before their meal time.
We wanted to provide a few extra tips to help make training easier. We recommend using a high value treat for training, especially when learning the process. Ideally, you want your dog extremely interested, but not franticly guessing behaviors. We typically start with string cheese, Full Moon Savory Bites or Stewart beef liver as our food lures, as our pups perform particularly well for them. As your dog learns the behavior, you can use less desirable rewards. Sometimes we even use dry kibble if our dogs know a behavior particularly well.
This is our (and our pups') favorite choice for beef liver! It's cheaper than a lot of other options and they go crazy for it! We've even used it to make a broth for frozen enrichment before and it's a hit!
For training, we also use non-verbal cues (hand signals) along with a verbal cue. Our pups are much more consistent when we use both, but still respond to either one individually. For example, we draw a circle in the air as our non-verbal cue for spin, but you can do whatever you want!
Finally, remember to make it fun! Most pups respond better and are more willing to perform behavior if you’re excited. You’ll hear a lot of dog/baby voices from us when we’re training our pups and we recommend you do the same!
Now that we’ve covered some of our favorite features, let’s talk about the cost of Puppr.
If you’re not 100% you are going to like Puppr, we recommend using the free version for a while. This will allow you to try out a few and make sure you like how Puppr teaches lessons. Puppr also offers a free premium trick of the week, where you get access to one selected behavior that isn’t normally available in the free version.
The peek at the premium benefits is extremely well done, and doesn’t feel like most apps we’ve tried with a free version. We used the free version of Puppr until we mastered some tricks and then transitioned into using the paid options.
Subscribing to Puppr Premium gets you some great benefits, including all the lessons, access to masterclasses, the puppy guide, and to the live chat feature.
We’ve already touched on the live chat feature, so we won’t discuss that again, but Puppr has an astonishing assortment of lessons available. They’ve divided the lessons into categories, which helps with exploring what’s available. The following categories are available:
Besides the additional lessons, Puppr Premium also unlocks access to some masterclasses. These are more in detailed lessons that are closer to mini-courses than individual lessons. The ones we thought were the best were the dog sports ones (disc, agility, swimming), nose work, and the specialized training options (Canine Good Citizen and Deaf/Blind Dogs). We’re going to be starting work on the nose work one soon, as both of our dogs love sniffing activities!
We haven’t used it, but we think the Weekly Puppy Guide is a great option for new puppy owners. It’s more structured than some of the other training lessons and gives you behaviors to work on every week with your new pup. It combines foundational, preventative, and socialization work to help keep your pup from developing and problematic behaviors down the road. We really like how Puppr incorporates the work with preventative and socialization training into the plan for pups, as we think these skills are vital to minimize negative behaviors later. Reactivity and other fear-based issues are significantly more work to fix than they are to prevent.
Puppr offers the following options for subscriptions if you decide you love their service as much as we do:
If you’re unable to or don’t want to subscribe, no worries! There are other ways to show your appreciation, as well! Puppr’s shop allows you to buy Puppr merch or products they recommend from Amazon.
Next time you’re shopping for dog supplies, check out Puppr’s store! They have a variety of their (and our) favorite supplies sold on Amazon! These are affiliate links to Puppr’s recommended supplies, and we use a lot of the supplies ourselves! Some of our favorites are in the puzzles category which we use for frozen Toppl recipes and frozen Kong recipes!
If you’re looking for something else, their merch offers another way to support them! The prices are fair and the designs are great, whether you want a t-shirt, sweater, or bag! Our favorite is the professional dog petter sweater, but a lot of them are great!
We love Puppr & recommend it to anyone looking for a great free dog training app! Don’t take it from us though, give their free version a go before subscribing to make sure it’s something you like!
Have a different favorite app for helping train your dog besides Puppr? Share your favorites (or why you love Puppr) with us on Instagram by tagging @therulybully.
Have fun!