NEW PUPPY!!!!! Stacks of photos!

[Andalla]

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments about Woody! We're both doing great. Woody is ridiculously well trained and well behaved - he's also been bell trained since 10 weeks - he has a bell by the backdoor so he can let us know when he needs to go out- which is so handy - he's been 100% toilet trained, since. However, good behaviour at home aside - when he gets to puppy school he is IMPOSSIBLE! He's SO distracted by the other puppies and just wants to play!

 

[Diana]

HAHA, Buffy was like that too. She knew all her commands and was an angel at home but at puppy school it was like we had never taught her anything. She was very distracted by the other dogs and the different noises in the class. The first time she even had an accident in class after she was pretty much potty trained. I spent the first session or two getting a bit frustrated (I wanted her to be the star of the class!), but eventually I got over that and Buffy became much more comfortable and well-behaved in puppy class. We even did an extra session and I think it helped her a lot, not only with training but also with socialization with other dogs (she is great with other dogs now) but also with becoming comfortable in new situations. Puppies need to generalize their training and knowledge to different contexts.... just like little kids... and that can be a little challenging for a young pup. It helped that we had a great teacher.

 

[celloyogi]

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments about Woody! We're both doing great. Woody is ridiculously well trained and well behaved - he's also been bell trained since 10 weeks - he has a bell by the backdoor so he can let us know when he needs to go out- which is so handy - he's been 100% toilet trained, since. However, good behaviour at home aside - when he gets to puppy school he is IMPOSSIBLE! He's SO distracted by the other puppies and just wants to play!

Olive was a handful at her puppy class earlier this year, too. It wasn't until the second-to-last week that we found a partial solution. Everyone in the class always sat in a circular-ish shape. Usually we sat in the middle of the longest arc of the shape. Olive always wanted to go see the dogs on the other side of the circle, or crawl under the chairs to either side of us, or she would almost shut down - not in fear but sensory overload.

So the partial solution was to move her to the "head of the class"... basically we sat at one end of the arc, so Olive could see everyone all at once, no one was out of her sight line at either side. She was so much calmer! I think she'd been trying to herd all the puppies before, so now that she could see all of them at once relaxed her.