For Christmas this year my mom bought puppy classes for me and Waeryn. We had our first class last Tuesday and our second one last night. The classes are once a week for six weeks and are one hour long. This post is just about my experiences at class and it’s pretty long, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing it’s ok. I’m not asking any questions or anything in it.
In the first class there were a lot of people and dogs and Waeryn was very distracted at first. I was a little embarrassed because they gave us something to sort of screen her off from the other dogs so she would stop barking. I didn't feel bad for long because before I knew it they were borrowing half of my screen to give to another dog, handing out water bottles, and putting gentle leaders on a couple. A lot of the dogs were really excited and it took kind of a long time for things to get quiet. Once the dogs were a little more comfortable, we started with something called the Name Game. It's where the instructor calls your dog to distract him/her and you're supposed to call their name and praise and treat as soon as they look at you. There are two instructors in our class so they each started on opposite sides of the room. Waeryn and I were the first ones to go on our side and I was really nervous. I thought I was going to have to give the "But she always does it at home" excuse. To my delight, Waeryn looked at me IMMEDIATELY, just like she does at home (it helps that the breeder started calling her by her name at 4 weeks of age though)! We did it one more time and the instructor said that we should end there because she's doing exactly what I ask.
Next we practiced sit and down, which Waeryn already knows, but she's never done it with that many distractions so it was a really good chance for us to get used to that. She didn't do nearly as well as she does at home, but that's to be expected.
Towards the end of class we had recess, but the instructors said that ideally it will usually fall in the middle of the class period. They wanted to do it at the end the first time so they could get a better idea of how they were going to section off the room. They ended up dividing it into two sections: big dogs and kindergarten. They had Waeryn go over in the kindergarten section and I was a little worried that she might get too crazy and jump on the dogs that were smaller than her (like she does to the cats), but she was very calm and cautious about the whole thing.
This week was even better for me because one of the instructors called and asked if Waeryn and I could start coming to a later class. When I got there I discovered that the later class was half of the original class, they had split it up based on which dogs would work best in the same class. I liked this a lot better because it gave us more room and a little less distractions, but still had enough puppies in it.
We started with the name game to get their attention, and then started working on “heel.” They had us start with our puppy in front of us, then lure them around with a treat so that they are facing forward and on our left side, then have them sit. I think Waeryn was doing pretty good with that one, but I had a little trouble maneuvering because I had to have the treat in my left hand so it would be closer to Waeryn which meant that the leash was in my right hand. It was awkward for me to have the leash in my right hand, but Waeryn on my left side.
Next we did “watch me” which was where we had to get our puppy looking directly into our eyes. Waeryn normally looks at my eyes anyway when she’s paying attention to me, but this way I’ll be able to get her to look at my eyes whenever I need her to pay attention to me.
The next thing we did was “off.” We held our hand in front of our puppy’s face (with a treat in our fist) and just let them lick and try to get the treat, but the second they took their nose off of our hand we said “good!” and gave them the treat. This was quite time consuming for me because Waeryn didn’t give up on the treat nearly as fast as the other pups. She licked and licked my hand trying to shove her tongue between my fingers and at one point reached up and tried digging at my hand. The instructors wanted to use her as an example, so they took her to the middle of the room and tried the same thing. When Waeryn still wasn’t giving up on the treat the instructor showed us how to give them a few LIGHT taps on the nose with our fist until they backed off. This worked very well with Waeryn and now when I say off she backs up a step and lays down.
Lastly (at the end of class again) we had recess. This time I asked if Waeryn could be in with the big dogs, since there was only two of them. They were a Husky named TuTonka and I think a Boxer named Joe. They were both significantly bigger than Waeryn (especially Joe), but it seemed to go pretty good. The only problem was that Joe and TuTonka seemed to keep stepping on Waeryn when they tried to play with her. The first time she got stepped on by TuTonka, she backed up really fast and ended up going between Joe’s legs. Pretty soon she was able to stay out from under their feet pretty well. I did notice that for a time she was walking around sniffing and licking the floor, finding treats that had been dropped. She was more interested in the food than the other dogs!
So far Puppy Classes have been a great experience for us as we are both learning a lot of new things! I look forward to them every week. I’m sorry this ended up being so long, but I wanted to share my experience with anyone who wants to read it. Another reason that it’s so detailed is so that if anyone who hasn’t gone to puppy classes yet wants to kind of get an idea of what they’re like, they can just read this. I know that before I went I didn’t really know what to expect.
Whitney