Has Anybody Else Failed Puppy Pre School

[Kevin]

Matilda and I have failed puppy pre school. I'm really disappointed as in my opinion we were doing so well. At home she knows, all of the commands. Sit Matilda and she sits. Down Matilda and she lays down. She waits and catches the polony in her mouth. I promise she does. She even spins to the left and spins to the right. But come Monday night 06:30pm, the start of puppy school and all she manages to do, is run in a circle, bites a German shepherds ear and puts her paw on a jack Russells head. When the instructor takes her from me to show me how to handle her, she jumps up, kicks the instructor in the tummy, jumps through her legs, does a spin to the left and buries her face in the instructors reward bag. What hurt the most was when we got to the end of the 6 week puppy preschool, all of the puppys graduated to big school, but Matilda and I will have to repeat. I'm so embarrassed and feel like I have let my puppy down. I do hope I'm not the only one repeating and feeling so bad

[carol marcum]

  All of the above sound like Brady at class. He was so playful that the instructor suggested benedryl before class. Later our vet said sometime it will make them more hyper. You guessed it Brady was the hyper one.

[Finding_Beau]

Hi Kevin, I agree with the comments that you and Matilda were unlucky to have an incompetent instructor. Long ago Puppy Kindy was purely a means of socialisation. No training was considered. Puppies should be allowed to be puppies. If the owner wished to progress to an obedience class later on, they would start at Level 1. At this Level, it was not expected that the young dogs would be perfectly behaved. The breed of the dog should always be taken into account. Also, within each breed, understandably some young dogs are more outgoing than others.

I prefer to train my English Setters myself now. I do not believe a dog is just an animal and that the human being is the superior species. For instance, my English Setter, Misty came to me at 13 months of age. She turned out to be deaf. I was not advised of this, but even if I had, this would not have stopped me from purchasing her (sight unseen). The previous owner was honest in telling me that Misty had never been taken anywhere. She had never worn a collar, never been taken on a walk, never been for a ride in a car, and she had never seen another human being or another dog except those she had lived with. I did not buy a book or attend a class on how to communicate with or train a deaf dog. I have found that Misty is very focussed on me because she is deaf unlike some of my English Setter boys who choose not to take the slightest notice of me on occasions, but this is what English Setters do! As long as they do not place themselves in a position where they can be harmed, who cares! I don't do as I am told all the time either!

Best Wishes from Susan.

[Jane Turner]

Kevin, 'we' failed a training class test too because that night there was too much owner stress in the air and too many distractions for my young dog to cope with. OK most (but not all) of the other dogs coped, but they weren't Setters! However the lessons learned in the class have stuck because we carried on with them and we have a (mostly) well behaved dog whose recall I'm very proud of. We just don't have the certificate! In future I'd look for training classes that are not based on passing a test.