Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Time to Start {Puppy} Kindergarten


In the first week of the new year, our family has decided to contract a variety of illnesses; we have the common cold, respiratory infections, and ear infections running wild in our house. So updates haven't been kept current, but the puppy training continues.

With Pivot very near ready to take his CGC (Canine Good Citizen) test, we had to reevaluate our plans for training and certification for the puppies. Bella simply isn't learning as quickly as Pivot, and needs some additional work. She is more typical of a five month old puppy, whereas Pivot is reminiscent of the honor student who aces the pretest so he can skip the real test altogether.

After talking to the trainers some more, we came to the decision to enroll Bella in puppy school rather than do in-home training. We believe the extra socialization and distraction training will benefit her the most, and the trainer has so much faith in Pivot that we were advised to keep him out of school, just teaching him what we learn from the class. Because Pivot goes to work with Kevin on a semi-regular basis (Kevin now gets requests from his regular customers to bring Pivot on certain days), we know his people skills are in order. In fact, Kevin let me know last week that Pivot passed the "Toddler Test." A three year old tried to ride Pivot like a horse, and poked him in the eye, and our big boy never flinched.

So with that, Bella is scheduled to begin her two month long class January 18th, and we are very excited to begin this next step of the process.

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