Puppy School Stories - Good Or Bad?

[loeka]

hello all,

We went to puppy school last night and to cut a long story short: it was slightly disastrous and though the trainer seems knowledgeable and has great people skills, I have my doubts about the setup. Now, I'm a total newbie and I probably should have looked into schools before signing up but oh, well. It was organised by my vet who's great so I trust her. Also, I know this is the first of four puppy classes but it's was such a frustrating experience that I needed to see if I was the only one.

So here's my experience of the first time ever at puppy school:

1. 10 puppies - twice as many people plus a few kids and this is held in the waiting room at the vet's. I suppose this is great if they're ickle pups and just lie in laps but perhaps not if there is a big lumbering black lab who wants to play with my kelpie x and vice versa.

2. After a 5 minute offleash play session with rambunctious lab puppies, Loeka was put back on a leash and I stupidly didn't reward him and he watched other puppies play. He was not amused and wanted to play as well.

3. Then the trainer gave us the basics on toilet training and stuff while Loeka was getting increasingly frustrated at being on the leash - usually when we have him on the leash it's for TOT or for a short walk about or on a longer lead for recall training. Also, because we were sitting so close to the other dogs, the big black lab kept pushing his way over to us and I couldn't keep them apart AND listen to the trainer AND try to keep Loeka calm and ARRRGGGGG it was so FRUSTRATING...

4. The trainer realised our frustrations and took our pup and he ended up nipping her - SIGH - big no-no and so she grabbed him by the collar and restrained him while he threw a tantrum. Then finally he calmed down and settled.

So I wonder if anyone else has similar experiences with their dogs and puppy school. If so, how did you resolve the situation? Are there any tips on how to get a dog to just settle with so much distraction? Will it get better? Am I over-thinking things? Are all puppy schools like this? Is it possible to fail puppy school? Am I too quick with my judgement?

Also, GOOD puppy school stories are also more than welcome! I want to hear the good and the bad! ; )

Thanks for reading : )

[Tilly]

Yes it is possible to fail puppy pre-school ... my little boy did. It was mainly because he barked at the instructor when she came too close to us while he wasn't looking ... actually I don't think he liked her much at all.

Thankfully the puppy pre-school I took my boy had the room to be able to move away from other dogs/people if there was a problem.

Mind you I spent most of the classes walking my boy as he was so excited to see all the other dogs. One thing I liked about the school was there was no off-leash play time and only calm introducing of the pups.

[16Paws]

We took our girl to 2 different puppy schools, checked out a third and ended up only going to one which we continued on with puppy school level 2 and basic obedience.

The third puppy school we didn't like the 'feel' of at all. The instructors seemed not very knowledgeable or ... confident and choker chains were in full use (which frankly made me feel sick seeing how rough some of the owners were being with their dogs).

The 2nd puppy school was good in theory, it appeared to be setup very well, they had a mini agility course, little off leash pens, would apparently introduce the dogs to all sorts of everyday items (umbrellas, horses, etc - we didn't get that far) and an award winning trainer/owner. The trainer we had was a young woman who didn't seem to know what schedule to follow and wasn't very observant of the pups. We had 2 aggressive/unsocial (hard to believe it possible at 12 weeks of age) pups in the group and in the 2nd week our lab got attacked by one of these dogs after which the trainer picked up the offending pup and soothed and stroked him and even gave him a treat as 'time out' for bad behaviour! This happened at the start of the class and ruined the whole experience for us. Our usually bright and friendly girl spent the rest of the class cowering behind our legs. We left feeling very angry at the way the attack was handled and discontinued our attendance. Class size was 10-12.

The final puppy school we attended was great, it was outdoors but secure in cricket picth/cage (not sure what they're called), the instructors were all knowledeable and the pups were made to work for their play time. Play time was very, very supervised with pups let off leash one by one until the trainer was sure everyone was going ok. Rough play was corrected with a silent time out and play time was short, around 5 mins at a time. I think the classes had around 8 people.