Luca's first puppy class tonight!

[**purpleprincess**]

We've signed up to puppy classes with Luca and I thought we'd get expelled after this first session

We arrived and it was the first session so all were excited, Luca loved it and just wanted to play! Trouble is, he started barking. He kept barking and so we had to have lots of distraction and regular timeouts!!  He soon clicked though that barking meant no fun, and so the lesson progressed really well. It doesn't help that he gets a bit hyper and barky when he needs a poo either!!! Thankfully that was very early on. 

He is pooped now though, had dinner when we got in and conked out! Am very proud of him though as he could do all the commands that we went through tonight and in the end he was a very relaxed puppy. Roll on next week!

Something that has made me think though... Luca goes to doggy daycare and they all bark at each other loads to play etc could this be a bad thing???  Or is it just normal and Luca will learn that you can't just bark all the time anywhere?! Too much to think about! I've got to start my new job as a teacher tomorrow as well!!!

[flower1]

Toby wasn't much of a barker, but he was very very polite which we think is down to staying with his family group longer and learning from them. We did puppy sit for my friends cocker a few times at around 4-7 months and he sounds like Luca 
What I noticed there was that Ollie would bark to get Toby to play with him and Toby would indulge even when he'd had enough. But as Ollie got older Toby was more prepared to tell him off so Ollie wasn't rewarded for his barking. He's done this to other dogs as well and also followed the example of other adult dogs in obedience classes in telling younger dogs off for staring... Who knew? It's like there is a point where the adult dog thinks the puppy is old enough to know better. Sounds like you are teaching him when it's not ok to bark so I would just wait and see how it goes.

[**purpleprincess**]

That's great, thank you. He did seem to twig that barking led to loss of play, it was just that new mummy feeling where yiu're so conscious of everything! Funny thing is generally he isn't much of a barker, always commented about how calm he is when we are out and about. Perhaps it was very overwhelming for him! All good fun