Mind Your Manners

Nine month old puppies can be a challenge.  Especially when you are nine months old and you weigh 75 lbs!  A few weeks ago we decided that in order to save our sanity, our home, and possible jail time for animal cruelty, we needed to do something about the puppies behavior.

The out of sight fencing has been a huge blessing.  Coal now has room to run and we are all happier.  But we still have to stop the jumping and the mouthy behavior before we end up looking like human chew toys.  We tried the board and train route and that helped, but it is difficult to really understand what they taught him during the 9 days he was there is less than 20 minutes.  Don't get me wrong, he was better but we still had issues.

I know he really wants to be a good dog, I can see it in his sad brown eyes, so we signed him up for adolescent obedience training at Support Dogs.  I wasn't sure what to expect and I was hoping for the best.  I'm not sure about the training at the local pet stores and most other training offered in this area is done in a drop-off/pick-up way.  No offense, but I need the repetition as much as Coal does!

Last week was our first class.  Coal barked and barked and barked and jumped and barked and barked.  He was so loud that even when the training was yelling, you couldn't hear her.  We finally got him to settle down and started our lessons.  It was the first week so it was a little chaotic and we didn't do much but we had some hope.

Today we had our second class.  There were twice as many dogs this week which was actually a good thing for us.  Coal needs to be around other dogs to get used to them.  We waited for our instructions, and Coal laid on the floor and didn't make a sound.  What?  Was this the same dog who wouldn't shut up last week?  Yep.  He was very well behaved during class.  He barked once and compared to the other growling going on, he was one of the angels in the class.  Next week will be the challenge - we have to come across the room without being on a leash.  I guess we better practice!