By Rachel Walker
A lot of people think puppy classes are about letting puppies off their leads to play with other puppies. In reality it’s almost the opposite. If we let puppies play like that, then they pick up on bad habits from each other, rather than learning how they should behave around adult dogs. Adult dogs don’t like being jumped on or having paws on their face like puppies love to do!
Go and watch a class. A good class will have no problem with that. A puppy class shouldn’t be too big (10, or the fewer the better), and puppies should be fairly young still (<20 weeks-ish). It should look like the puppies are having a lovely time with their owners. You have read our puppy file haven’t you about bringing your pup up the positive way? You should be able to see this in the class too. Puppies shouldn’t be made to do anything they aren’t sure of; some pups might just want to watch and not join in; and definitely no hands on pups or tugging of leads etc.
To me, a good puppy class should have:
- Exposure to fun things (mine had ball pools, bubble machines, tunnels, toys, etc)
- Bits of training (although I would expect you might learn ‘how’ to do something in class, it’s always better to practise quietly at home without all the exciting distractions)
- Short (seconds) introductions to other puppies while on a very loose lead, and then pups happily encouraged away to be back with their human
All of the above in short duration to keep puppies interest and to prevent them getting overwhelmed.