October 3, 2009 - Socialization

Last night Emmy and I attended our first Puppy Socialization class at the Boulder Valley Humane Society. Basically you pay $10 to sit in a room while somebody else monitors how your dog is playing with other dogs. As silly as that sounds, I think it was money well spent.

One mistake we made with Frannie was to not take things like this seriously enough. When she was this age she, like Emmy, was very smart and had an older dog to play with all day long. We took Frannie to one or two puppy training classes, but she was so small and timid she just hid under a chair and then threw up from the stress.

Besides, she learned how to sit on command after two or three tries, so we really didn't see the point. Eleven years later she's a 60+ lb dog who sits, comes when you call most of the time, and that's about it. She also has "issues" from time to time with other dogs, strange people and things like that.

So we're going to make sure we socialize Emmy. The current school of thought, at least the one we're following, is that you have to expose the puppy to as much as possible within the first three or four months of life.

So in the two weeks that Emmy has been with us she's been to my office twice (four hours each time) been to Petsmart twice, been to Lowes once, taken a walk during the elementary school after class running club and just about everything else we can think of.

She's already showing less "mouthing" behavior, which is great since she will always be around kids.

During the puppy class last night, only one other dog showed up - a sweet 10 week old mix named Berlin. Some sort of cattle dog possibly, but she also looks like she might have some sort of terrier in her. Berlin had been the previous week and had been overwhelmed by the number and size of the other puppies. Since this was my first time I was at first a bit disappointed that there was only one other dog, but in the end I think it did Emmy a lot of good.

Under guidance from the instructor we introduced the pups, and Emmy quickly established her dominance. In fact she was so dominant that I was feeling a bit embarrassed, but the instructor watched the proceedings closely and as soon as Berlin showed signs of needing a break, she broke up the play time by squeezing a very loud squeaky toy and squirting them with a water bottle.

In a very short amount of time Emmy learned that tackling Berlin wouldn't get her to play, and biting Berlin wouldn't get her to play, and barking wouldn't get her to play, but taking a toy and running away would.

Once that pattern was established the play was much more even and I'm sure Berlin had as much fun as Emmy.

These are lessons I'll try to incorporate into my own training, and I'm pretty sure we'll be back for at least one, if not two more puppy socialization classes. Next on the agenda is to sign up for the six week training class. While I'm confident that we have the resources to train her ourselves, external feedback is always helpful in a situation like this.

Potty Training update: Emmy is now sleeping successfully from 10:00 until 3:15, and has still not made a mess in her crate or, other than during the first night, in the laundry room, her expanded "safe" area.

Unfortunately she has peed in the living room with no warning each of the last two nights between the 8:00 and 10:00pm walks. I think this is partially because by the end of the day she is exhausted, and partially because she doesn't completely "get it" yet.

Last night I was able to interrupt her and continue the pee outside, so maybe we'll make some progress now.