Puppy Classes

We started puppy classes this past week. Puppy 2 Classes to be exact. We are doing them through Petco by our house. Puppy 2, not because he passed Puppy 1, but because he was too old for that class (I guess it is really for ‘puppies’ like 0-6 months old and Walt is about 9-10 months). [Which does remind me, I wonder if Walt gets some sort of certificate for passing the class, hehe.]

We showed up for our class and found out that we were the ONLY ONES in the class. At first I was a little annoyed. I thought to myself that Walt would be real good in class, but that is because there weren’t many distractions around – which is why we wanted to do a class in the first place. After a few minutes I realized that the distractions would NOT be an issue. The trainer has her dog there, not to mention there are always people (and animals) coming in and out of the store, and since we are in the middle of the action, Walt sees, hears, and smells it all.

The nice thing is that since we are the only ones in the class we are able to dictate the pace at which we go and what we learn. She is able to use Walt in the example for everything, so it isn’t like a big group of 20 dogs and we are hoping that we are paying attention and learning things properly. We are able to work one-on-one. Another nice thing is, we signed up for the class, but even though no one else signed up, we still are only paying the class price (which is $109 for a 6-week class instead of $300 for 4 one-on-one sessions).

This past week we went over our concerns (pulling on a leash, not coming when called, etc). She said that we would be able to work on all of them – so hopefully after 6 weeks we have a PERFECT dog [I know I am partial, but I have to say he is pretty close to perfect right now, hehe].

After we went over our expectations we started getting down to business. We went over Sit, Stay, and Come. She also wants us to work on boundary control (he wants to run out of the car as soon as you open the door, so trying to work on boundaries that he cannot cross until we let him know).

I feel like for the most part it is training us. We need to know a good way to do it and how to stay consistent. Hopefully the trainer can teach Ryan and I (and in turn we can engrain it into Walt).