Useless Puppy!

[Nat11]

Have been taking Winston to puppy classes for 4 weeks now - before we started he could do sit, stay, down, paw, recall, fetch - do you think he does any of it at class? Of course not!!  Even worse he barks a lot (and is the only one that does) and especially barks when the other dogs are  taking their turn on the floor!    i thinkl the troublr is that he gets hyper excited by all the people and puppies and in that natural cocker way wants to meet everyone and sniff/slobber them to death  ::)He does the odd thing right but on the whole manages to humilate us on a weekly basis!  Of course everyone else has a calm, well behaved puppy.......   Still we will perserve with training in the week depsite watching it all come undone on sat morning 

[Tasha]

  you know what they say about workmen who blame their tools...

Don't worry you should see Ayla I take her to gundog training where she does the obedience class for puppies and they add a little bit of retrieving at the end, she does it lovely at home but in class last week the temptation to take her dummy to her favorite friend (a large munsterlander) was too much, so she did this amasing slide underneath him gave him her dummy and then waited to be played with, after that she did circuits of the wood we were in, dodging everything totally ignoring me and in the end had to be caught by one of the other owners   Everyone was laughing but all the hard work I'd put in at home went completely to pot so we are now doing alot of socialising to sort that little mess out 

Don't you just love a cocker, my weimaraner was never allowed to get away with that but Ayla well... 

[Cob-Web]

Aw, poor Winston 

A training class is one of the highest distraction environment that any dog will be exposed to - it is unrealistic to expect an untrained dog to succeed 

Try to view training classes as somewhere you go to learn how to train your dog; and then practice what you learn, first of all at home, then in gradually higher distraction environments - eventually, you should find that Winston begins to respond when you are at classes - at least some of the time 

[ali]

Try to view training classes as somewhere you go to learn how to train your dog; and then practice what you learn, first of all at home, then in gradually higher distraction environments - eventually, you should find that Winston begins to respond when you are at classes - at least some of the time 

this is exactly the advice that i would give based on our experiences with barkley in training classes. he would be completely silent all week but within ten minutes of the class starting, he'd be barking frequently.  no one else's dog ever barked! 

it got to the point with barkley where the classes just weren't constructive for him at all so we had a few wonderful one-on-one sessions and then went away to teach him everything we'd learnt. once he masters that, we then go back for another session to see what we can work on next. he is much calmer now though so i'm planning to try a group class again in the next few weeks, as being able to focus on me amongst all those other dogs would clearly be a great achievement for him!

[spanielcrazy]

I do believe dogs were put on this earth to make fools of us 

[Deb H]

We had exactly the same problem with George. We started his training at home he could sit down stay and even do a couple of them in sequence took him to puppy class nada. He barked peed pood kissed frolicked and acted like the class clown. The instructer suggested that maybe he wasn't used to other dogs, err two more at home and gets taken everywhere. We realised it was George's way of getting his own way we stopped going.

[Joules]

I had the opposite problem with Coco - she did everything perfectly in class then when I tried to get her to do it at home she just looked at me as if to say - "you don't really expect me to take any notice of you do you?"    I think you have got the better deal - I agree, puppy class is really just so you can learn how to teach your puppy at home 

[Gilly]

Winston isn't a "useless" puppy  he's just a puppy 

[Nicola]

Alfie was also the barker in his puppy class    my normally silent pup would turn into a yapping little monster as soon as we set foot inside the hall. He did grow out of it eventually.... although he will still give the odd yip if he thinks I'm taking too long about something! 

[Nat11]

Winston isn't a "useless" puppy  he's just a puppy 

I know - was just kidding  he is actually pretty good (when not at class) and its all good socialisation for him. And anyway - someone has to be bottom of the class