Puppy Socialization - Part 2
On Monday night, we went to our third class of puppy school and it was a fascinating experience. We’ve really been enjoying these classes at When Hounds Fly in downtown Toronto. Adelaide was a little wild for the first half of class. She loves meeting new dogs and new humans but sometimes struggles with self control. One of her classmates from another week happened to be in the class and they hit it off again just like before. The only problem is that not every puppy (or human) wants to be greeted by a little jumping kangaroo. To our surprise and glee, today’s focus of class was socializing and polite greeting. We began socializing by rolling a mini skateboard towards Adelaide and seeing how she would react. We were told to look for signs of fear in her body language. Adelaide seemed almost un-phased by the skateboard and concerned herself more with the instructor. We were told this wasn’t the worst thing because it showed that Adelaide was pretty comfortable with the introduction of the new potentially scary skateboard.
This exercise was followed by puppy playtime. Adelaide LOVES social time. Tonight she seemed a little more energetic than usual but most of the other pups were excited to play as well. One of the sweet puppies beside us was nervous and Adelaide kept trying to make friends with him. While he never warmed up to her, it was a lesson for Adelaide in self control.
Next on the agenda was introducing our pups to sounds such as thunderstorms, fireworks, or construction. The instructor started playing a recording of these potentially frightening sounds and we had to feed treats to Adelaide the moment she noticed the sound. Every other pup in the room noticed the sounds, however Adelaide didn’t budge or get distracted once! This may be due to the fact that Adelaide has already heard many big scary sounds like construction on our street, thunderstorms, and fire alarms. During our building’s latest fire alarm testing, Adelaide was startled at first but then carried on just playing with her toys. I am sure that we will come across something that scares her, but til then, we’ll just keep giving her chew toys!
During the potty break, Adelaide usually gets too excited to pee and just wants to play with her friends. We were so excited tonight because we found a park on the pee break and Adelaide went! She still was pretty motivated by following her friends, but we think that all the time spent in the grass this weekend made a big difference.
The last portion of class was dedicated to polite greetings. We tested Adelaide by asking her to sit while the instructor came to greet her. If Adelaide jumped or got too excited, the instructor would turn around and take away their attention. We were so surprised that Adelaide was very well behaved when treats were involved!
Overall we are so proud of all the progress we have seen. Adelaide had no accidents in class, she peed on her break, she was well behaved when greeting, she did well focussing on treats or her chew stick during sound distractions and did a great job of playing with her friends. Only two weeks are left of training and we can’t wait to see where she’ll be by then.