Puppy Pre-school #2

Welcome to another episode of puppy pre-school. We got to class early but were able to go in with Harley. There was a 12 week old puppy, same age as Harley, but about the one quarter the size. It is a King Charles Spaniel. Very tiny. And of course Harley was full of piss and vinegar from the get go today. I felt bad that he was going after the little dog so much but I didn't do anything to stop him. Rocky, the KCS, was rescued several times by his family. I don't blame them for doing that. I would have been worried too if a much bigger dog went after Harley.

The first thing we did in class was let the puppies play. Harley really enjoyed doing that today. He was trying to hump other dogs though. Silly boy. He just was so excited. I think that all the dogs from last week were back (Stormy the Yorkie, Star the Beagle/Heeler, Coby the Golden Retriever, Caboose the Bernese Mountain Dog and Ike the Heeler). So today there were 7 dogs total - all shapes, sizes and breeds.

The second thing we did was to go around to everyone else's dog and mess with them (touch their ears, grab them by the collar, touch their feet, etc.). Harley had a great time doing that because he got treats from everyone. There were 2 people to every dog today! Wow! Every dog got messed with a lot. After the touching we got our dogs to come to us and we worked on sit and down with click/treat. Today we added in leave it. We put treats in our hand, closed our hand and waited for the dog to take it's nose or mouth off of our hand. As soon as they stopped rooting around we did a click/treat. Harley did okay with leave it. He did excellent with his sits and downs. We're also working on him extending his paw for a shake. He seems to get it so far. The only thing that I need to do differently is to do each behavior 5 times in a row so I can see what percent of the time he is doing the behavior. I was doing sit, down, up, paw shake, down, sit, etc. Christine said that we need to do 5 in a row so we can see what kind of progress he's making.

The puppies got another play time and Harley was under my chair for some of it. He was already tired. He got up after a while though and started to play again. He really enjoys playing with Star. Star, by the way, wasn't hand shy at all today. What progress Star is making. It was amazing to see. The other thing I noticed was how big Harley got since last week. Other people commented on it too. He's going to be a big boy.

After the second play time we worked on leave it and having them come to us. Harley did pretty good. He seems to get what is being asked of him. I didn't feed him lunch today since he was going to get so many treats. He wanted treats the whole time we were there. At the end of the class an older puppy came in and they all got play time again. We were in class over an hour again. I'm glad we get so much time for the puppies to play and learn.

Of course now Harley is khaked out in the kitchen. He's been sleeping quite a while. I'm sure he is quite tired out from all the playing and learning today. I'll have to get him up in about half an hour to feed him but I'll wait a bit if he really is sleeping deep. I'm ready for a nap myself.

Homework for the week is to work on sit, down and leave it. Also, we need to get our puppies out into the world as much as we can. I did talk to Christine about him jumping up on us. She said we should turn away from him when he does that. If we are sitting, we need to get up and walk away. He can't think it's okay to jump up on us. He was jumping up on everyone in class today. I don't want him to do that. I also need to work with him on not going around me when we are walking. I'm going to focus on walking loose leash this week and keeping him on my left side using treats.

We have class next week even though it's Labor Day weekend. I'm thinking that not everyone will show up because of the holiday. Having just a few dogs will make it interesting. Forgot to add that there were 3 kids there today. They were with Rocky. At first they were saying that Harley was attacking Rocky. LOL After Christine explained things to them about the dogs learning boundaries and learning how to be dogs they were okay with Harley playing with Rocky.

There's lots of work do be done this week. I want to work on rewarding the things that I want him to do and ignoring the things that I don't want him to do. There will be a lot of distracting with treats. Overall, class was excellent again today. I'm so glad we got into this class. I'm not sure if there will be another class after this or not. All the puppies should be ready to move ahead since they are all about the same age but I don't know what plans other people have concerning their puppies. If Christine doesn't have a class I'll have to take Harley somewhere else. I don't want him to go too long without training.

Well, he's still sleeping and I'm getting sleepy myself. I need to go to the store but I'm not sure if I'm going to make it there tonight. I'm just as worn out from class as Harley.