Still boistrous!

Second puppy class last night, and Coco was as boisterous as ever.

The slightly older Labrador that was there last week has now finished her classes, so she is now one of the larger dogs there and by far the most confident.

Almost the minute she arrived, she mugged a gorgeous fluffy golden retriever puppy that looked like it had come straight out of the tumble dryer and is about 10 weeks old (so slightly younger than her) causing it to pee on the floor with nerves, then set about a lovely little cocker spaniel puppy called Norman (great name!) batting him around the head with her paws as she has experienced our cats do to her. Norman didn’t like it, but fortunately his owner was very understanding!

On the plus side, I think we’ve pretty much got the hang of ‘sit’ and ‘down’ now and are well on the way to ‘stay’ and ‘leave’. In fact I’d venture to say that Coco was probably the fastest to learn ‘leave’ of all the puppies there (God, don’t I sound like a proud parent). But we are way behind with ‘heel’ and ‘come’, and it is clear that she is too free spirited to think they apply to her!

‘Heel’ and ‘come’ are two exercises the puppies have to learn off the lead, which I knew from the minute the trainer said “Now take off their leads” would be a recipe for disaster. On the lead Coco was fine with the ‘heel’ thing, but the minute I took it off she was racing around like a dervish distracting all the other puppies and trying to nick the treats from the hands of the other owners whose dogs were doing what they were told.

“Hold her in the calm position” suggested the trainer. The calm position is when you hold your puppy on your lap with its back to you and your arms firmly round its tummy, with the idea that if they feel close to you, their pack leader, and therefore secure they will calm down and behave. It works for about five seconds, then Coco gets restless, wriggles, squirms and tried to turn round and either bite your ear or lick your face. She also gets very hot in your arms and starts panting at an alarming rate, trying to get away and reach the water bowl in the middle of the floor (which in her boisterousness she overturned three times last evening) so she can gulp down gallons of water and cool down (then have a full bladder and pee on the floor or in the car if you are unlucky).

Despite all this, she is a sweetie and we are so glad we took the plunge and got her. She’ll learn, and part of the trouble with the classes is there are too many distractions and at 6.30pm it is right in the middle of her ‘frantic time’ when she has loads of energy that she wants to burn off because we have been busy or working all day. But there isn’t much choice if you work, as you have to do these things in the evening, so we’ll persevere.

So, this week’s homework is ‘stay’, ‘leave’ and ‘heel’. She clearly isn’t ready for ‘come’, which is when you let them go quite a distance away and then get them to return to you. Knowing my luck, she’d wander off to Godstone and be lost forever! We’ll work on all that over the next fortnight until the next class (nothing next week because of the bank holiday).

Then we’ll come home with a gold star! I hope!

Sit !!

On Monday evening (ie yesterday), we went to our first puppy training class.

I was prepared for an hour of humiliation, and it must be said that apart from another Labrador puppy that was slightly older than Coco she was the most confident and boisterous dog there, but actually it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought and I ended up thoroughly enjoying myself.

There were ten puppies there of varying ages between eight weeks and four months, so Coco was about middling. She was also middling size-wise, somewhere between the spaniels and one enormous Weimeramer (not sure if that is how you spell it, but anyway some bloody enormous Scandi hunting dog) that was only ten weeks old but already the size of a small pony.

There were three spaniels (two Cocker Spaniels and one King Charles), a Beagle, two Terriers, a Dalmatian, two Labs, this enormous thing and a few dogs which were either cross breed or something so pedigree I’d never heard of it, including one that looked like a teddy bear.

We learned ‘sit’, ‘down’ and had an attempt at ‘heel’. By and large, Coco didn’t do too badly although did get bored after a few attempts and when she discovered that once she got the hang of it all she was expected to do it without any meaty treats lost all interest and just rushed round the floor hoovering up the dropped bits of chicken breast that the other puppies had discarded.

The Hubby came along too, and if anything was a bit slower than the dog at learning, constantly forgetting all the verbal commands and being inconsistent with hand signals (he’s a bit like that when he’s driving the car, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised!). I think it was all a bit of a culture shock for him; after years of not having any animals at all and then in the last few acquiring a few cats through association with me, he suddenly has an energetic and strong minded, intelligent dog to deal with and has discovered a whole new world of things to do and buy.

All in all though, things went OK and at least Coco didn’t disgrace herself by peeing on the floor like a couple of the other, considerably more nervous puppies did. Considering she had never met another dog apart from her brothers and sisters (whom she has probably forgotten by now anyway) she was pretty well behaved and didn’t try to bite any other animal or person.

The lady running these classes has been recommended by the vets, and she is apparently an animal behaviourist as well as a puppy trainer. When she demonstrated the techniques on these infants, it all looked so easy but of course once the whole doggy class gets up and has a go there are so many distractions it makes it very difficult for the puppy to concentrate. So, we have homework! The exercises have to be repeated several times daily, firstly with treats then without. We have to take her out to meet other animals and get used to their presence so she is less easily distracted.

So there will be lots more trips out, which means, unfortunately for her, lots more trips in the car. Coco already dislikes the car and hates being shut behind her dog guard in the back and not able to join in with her human companions. It’s amazing how piercing a dog’s whine can be when you are enclosed with her inside four cubic metres of metal, but she has to get used to it because the car is a necessary evil of life today and what’s more, can take you to lots of good doggie places like the park. So somehow, she will have to at least learn to tolerate it, if not to like it.

We have plans to take her to the big agricultural show held locally over the August bank holiday weekend, so hopefully she will have learned to be in the car and to obey some basic commands by then. Otherwise it will be an interesting couple of days!