As soon as I knew we were getting a puppy, I started looking for training classes. The breeder we got our puppy from recommended them, especially as our puppy is a cocker spaniel and therefore likely to actually enjoy training. She’ll do anything for food. I’d had a dog as a kid but we never did any kind of training. I didn’t feel nervous about having a dog but I did feel that I probably needed some help on how to get off on the right foot…and stay there.
I did the usual internet search and found some classes fairly locally, one in particular was in a church hall…yay, indoors, it was February after all. It was five weeks of classes, an hour each, on a Saturday morning. There was a session starting just after Bonnie was ready to get out and about properly after all her vaccinations and so I signed up for my daughter and I to take her.
Definitely one of my better decisions!
The class was small, only 5 or 6 pups in total. There was plenty of space in the hall. I think we were as nervous as the dogs though.
The trainer, Stephanie, was brilliant. It was soon pretty obvious that it wasn’t really the dogs who were being trained but the owners. I learned to watch what Stephanie was doing, how she was watching us and the dogs and responding to what was going on. I think we did pretty well in our five weeks. Bonnie was good with the other dogs, which was a relief. We got to grips with most of the basics, Stephanie provided us with “homework” and extra information in between the classes.
The main thing wasn’t that we finished the 5 weeks with a fully trained puppy…maybe some people do, we definitely didn’t! We left with the basics and with some confidence about dealing with the next steps. It’s definitely an ongoing process, we’re trying to keep going with the exercises and practising. We’re not always good at remembering to keep it up but we do try. When things aren’t going quite right I often think back to the classes and what Stephanie would have said, or how she would have approached it.
Here’s Bonnie on her graduation day. She doesn’t look terribly thrilled but then she’s a spaniel and does have a tendency to look a bit doleful…even when she’s happy…which I’m sure she is here!
Puppy classes by Stephanie of Puppy Life highly recommended.
Tartantastic 
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