Why I Love Puppy Class

I love taking puppies to puppy classes. Most everybody knows I love puppies, and love training puppies. I love watching them learn and bringing them along the path of being a team. I love watching their brains turn, seeing them make connections. I feel so privileged to see a spark I planted in their little heads take hold and burn.

Bahnsen is in a puppy class, and after taking him the other night I got to thinking about why I like puppy classes so much. It's because they remind you of everything you already know ... but forgot. They remind you of the importance of actually teaching a dog his name ... even if he already knows it. Bahnsen knows his name. (That's the reason he's called Bahnsen, because when it came time to give him a "real" name, he was already responding so well to Bahnsen.) To sit politely for petting. To sit at the door before you go out of it and to respect your space. That you need to be more interesting when you're out for a walk with your dog if you want him to pay more attention to you than to his surroundings.

I've never yet been to a basic puppy class that I didn't feel sharpened me as a trainer.

Posted are photos of Itty on the farm this week, wet from swimming in the pond and ready for whatever.

What Not To Do

The next time you're at PetSmart and you see those neat looking little CHEAP laser pointers with that nifty little belt loop clip at the check out stand ... don't, I repeat DON'T buy one! At least, not for your dog.

It can be tempting. Learn from my mistakes. I fell for it a few weeks ago and am going to tell you the story I'm living to regret.

Back when I was in college, I had a Border Collie named Megan. I lived with my grandmother, and would sit, studying, at the kitchen table where the light from the lamp would glint off my watch crystal and flash against the wall beside me. Megan would stand there and watch for the glint of light and repeatedly drive her teeth into the wall, trying to capture the glint. It was merely amusing until the day when I walked into the kitchen and caught her standing at the wall, staring at "the spot" ... waiting for the glint of light to reappear. Then it became hysterical.

Had I been a smarter person, and better able to draw conclusions, I would have remembered Megan, and never bought that laser pointer a month ago. But I did.

All the dogs loved it, at first. Four of them, within ten minutes had connected that red dot of light to the wand I was holding in my hand. Bahnsen, however, did not. Does not. Probably cannot.

Want your dog to spin? Nooo problem! Spin the laser pointer. Fastest spin in North Carolina, right there on cue. Want your dog to climb the wall? Well, we can arrange that, too! It's so cute, so laughable, his intentness on the carpet, the floor, waiting for the red dot to reappear.

However, assuming I keep Bahnsen long term, his future is that of a performance dog. I want his attention to be on ME. All the dogs' attention is always on me. They monitor everything I do. If I'm sitting at the computer, they're all lying around me. But let me go put on my shoes ... and they're all crowding me, dancing, the hope alive in their eyes saying, "Pick me, pick me!" (How I miss Clue, who used to bring me my shoes!)

Suddenly, Bahnsen's attention is no longer on me. He leaves my side in the mornings and is alone in the living room, staring at the carpet. I realize: he's waiting for the "dot" to reappear! He'll interrupt a nap to go and check if it's there. He remembers it. He watches for it. He hopes it will come. He checks for its presence upon entering the room.

Well, one thing leads to another. Bahnsen's sire, Itty, is a first rate fly catcher. He adores the challenge. It's great. I never have flies in the house ... Itty pursues them until they no longer exist. Bahnsen, with his attention on the ground, has suddenly clued into low flying flies, and he's as obsessed with them as he was the laser dot. At his puppy class tonight, he could hardly pay attention for chasing a fly that kept buzzing around, lighting on the pavement.

We came home, pulled off down the farm path and checked on the triplets (doing fine) and on back to the agility field where I parked and had him jump out to accompany me on my walk ... I'm trying to get a couple of miles in every day. It's getting close to dark. Darker. Almost completely dark. The lightening bugs are out. And ... guess who notices? Pursues? Gives obsessive chase? You got it. Bahnsen.

My work is cut out for me! The moral is: be careful what you let into those serious little minds. And leave the laser pointers at the store! (Besides, they're not really "fair" for the dog can never really win.)

Long overdue update

It has been a long time since I last posted, and I apologize to any of you who check in frequently only to be disappointed. No sooner had the last puppy gone home when Acey came into heat and unfortunately for me, her season was was followed by pyometra, which is a uterine infection that females sometimes get following their seasons. I took her to Dr. Katherine Settle at Sanford Animal Hospital, our not so local vet who is also a dog breeder and trainer and exhibitor and who understands the semi-obsessions that we dog people can have about our canine friends. We tried to save Acey's fertility with a week of prostaglandin injections to help her expel the stuff in her uterus, but we ended up having to have her spayed as her cervix just wasn't open enough to let enough stuff out and her life was in danger. The whole ordeal was both frightening and sad, and afterwards I just grieved. Acey is an incredibly special bitch and I have looked forward for so long to her puppies. At first I could hardly look at her beautiful face without tearing up, but we're all doing better now. Acey has completely recovered.

Bahnsen continues to be a fun, intriguing puppy. He is quiet and serious and even sedate ... until I indicate it's time to work/play and then he's doing leaps and bounds, yet is extremely focused for a not yet five month old puppy. He gives a very fast "high five" now, shakes hands on the prompt "how do you do" ("pleased to meet you" is the response), gives a quick "sit" or "lie down", does a sit and down stay, knows what "load up" means, retrieves a ball, and plays tug with the best of them. And I really haven't spent all that much time in training him. He turned on to sheep a couple of weeks ago. He's been going with me to water and feed them for some time and this particular time he suddenly noticed how they moved off of his movement. He moved, they moved. He stopped, alert. He moved again. They moved again. He rushed them. They ran. He chased. He almost immediately split off a newborn lamb and ran it into the round pen where he pinned it to the ground. His expression as he looked up at me was hysterical ... I don't think he was quite sure just what he had done.

We had triplets born here yesterday, just a few days after I sold off ten sheep because they were getting so populous. I went from twenty one to eleven and now am back up to fourteen. The babies are precious, two boys and a girl, and from my favoritie ewe, too. It's the third set of triplets to be born here this year, but the only one to have all three live. Photos are of Bahnsen, Acey and the triplets with their mom, all taken today. Enjoy!