Last night, Little Riley Pants had his first night of puppy class. I’m sorry, that’s Better Dog I class.
Now, Riley knows his name and can sit, shake, lay down, jump, hug, and pee on the floor. He pretty much has all of those mastered in any order. But not with other new dogs around.
Our first cute was trick was to see if the dogs knew their name. I was a little nervous about this one, because I call him things like Douchebag, Dumbass, Asshole, and Puppy. Turns out he does know his name is Riley, but just chooses not to answer when there are other dogs within his sniffing distance.
We did sit, which Riley does via hand signal. We did lay down, which Riley also does via hand signal. In short, he knows how to do everything we went over in class last night. It’s just hard for him to focus when there are new dogs around that he would like to hump.
Bruno the 5-month old boxer was there and unbelievably adorable. As was his owner. It makes me sad that Riley wasn’t hanging around with me 24/7 at that age. Bruno was a biter and a jumper, though, so I feel really lucky that Riley never bites unless he’s seriously antagonized.
I guess my overall experience with Better Dog I was okay for the first night of mass puppy chaos. I was irritated that the trainer’s assistant kept watching me with my dog, like perhaps I was going to beat him with a cinder block like I always do at home when he doens’t listen to me the first time. (For those concerned, I’ve never beaten my dog with anything. Relax.) I’m hoping next week she can focus her attention on something that might be a little more productive to our class, like getting the dog in the corner to stop barking for the entire hour long class.
