Puppy Class

Here's some really old news but I'm in the process of catching up on the blog so I thought that I would start here.

Back in April, after the regular obedience and agility classes had ended, I was pressured by some acquaintances to offer a puppy class. Because I was going out on leave in May and because a puppy class was something new for me, I decided to limit it to four weeks.

The puppy class was certainly an experiment. It isn’t something I can run on a regular basis since it will be uncommon to have a sufficient number of sufficiently young pups available at a given time here in Dhahran (I found out that the camp vet only has about 800 dogs registered, which is fewer than I expected). Still, I wanted to try my hand at working with younger dogs. Most of the dogs were around 16 weeks old, which is much older than you'd see in puppy classes in the U.S. But I have to work with the dogs that are here.

Azza and three golden littermates, two males and a female (the female is also on the ground next to Azza). I certainly wouldn't have chosen to have three littermates in the same class, but it worked out okay.

 I did a fair bit of research to figure out how best to structure the puppy classes. For example, I don’t allow the dogs in my basic obedience class to interact before, during, or after class (while they are on school grounds, at least). But this rule clearly had to be relaxed a bit in the case of young dogs that need to play with other dogs in order to learn proper play habits and signals, bite inhibition, and so forth. We started each class with a free "play time" in which the pups were allowed to be off leash so they could explore some of these signals.

 

I came up with at least four “what is that?” stations each week for the first three weeks of class. This stretched me a bit in terms of resources, but I managed to drag in plastic bags, a hair dryer, a cardboard box, plastic mesh that I taped to the floor, metal cookie sheets, orange cones, hats and abayas, an agility tunnel, a tippy board…you get the idea. For about 15 minutes of each class, I had the handlers take their dogs through/across the stations. It was a bit chaotic and noisy but that was also part of the exercise. I wanted to encourage all the puppies to explore and be rewarded for it. I also wanted the handlers to learn how to reward their puppies for all types of behaviors, not just the standard sit and come.

I included a short activity on grooming (cleaning ears, clipping nails, brushing coats) which turned out to be revelatory for one handler. She complained to me that her dog resisted all attempts at grooming. Turns out the woman was using a wire slicker brush! I'd resist that to if you tried to drag it through my hair! When I had her use a boar bristle brush on her dog, the pup stretched out on the ground, totally limp. She was so happy to learn this one new thing!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I also had the class play “pass the puppy." This is a great game to get the young dogs used to calmly interacting with other humans. Everyone sits in a circle and passes their puppy to the person to the right. After about 30 seconds of petting and treats, the dogs get passed to the next person, and so on until the pups end up back with their owner. It's another chaotic and noisy game but everyone really enjoyed it.

I brought Azza each week and even though she peed on the floor every time someone approached her to pet here or when she met a new dog, I think it was a reasonably good experience for her.

I have become much more comfortable working with kids and their dogs and now encourage parents to bring their kids as long as the kids are actually doing training, not sitting around doing nothing or even worse, being disruptive. I don't run a day care, right?

Because I only had four weeks, I decided to scale back the formal commands that I introduced to just the basics: hand touch, sit, stay, and come. But I am happy at how many activities I was able to include in just four one-hour sessions. I certainly kept those pups and handlers moving!

This has to be my favorite shot from the class. This is one heck of a dedicated owner. And yes, that chichi did go through the curved tunnel eventually! The chichi was a real hoot, a classic "giant dog trapped in tiny dog body" dog.