Puppy school dropout

When I think of puppy school, I envision a bunch of cute puppies playing and learning a few basic activities. It is not real training; it is more for socialization and fun. What could be wrong with that? In my mind, it was going to be a rosie posey world. Then again, it is Dixie I am talking about.

I wanted to socialize Dixie sooner rather than later, so I signed her up for puppy school the second week I had her. I chose a class run by the trainer who had helped me work with my previous dog. The trainer was all about positive reinforcement, which was essential to me, so I was all on board. Dixie is an intelligent dog, and I was excited to see her potential. I was confident she would pass the class with flying colors. Wrong.

The first thing we did in class was to teach our dogs to sit on a mat. The goal was to get the dog to think of the mat as a happy place where good things happen (i.e., receive tons of treats). Every time Dixie got on the mat, even if by mistake, she got a bunch of goodies. “Here, Dixie. On your mat. On your mat.” She caught on very quickly, and I was so proud of her. She kept hopping on that mat as long as she received an endless supply of hotdogs and cheese.

After a few minutes of the mat exercise, we moved on to engagement (teaching Dixie to look at me when I talked). I was thinking to myself; We practiced this at home. She is going to nail this. Wrong again.

Dixie wanted to avoid playing the engagement game. She wanted more treats and had no interest in earning them. She did not look at me. She honed in on the treat bag and acted like I was just a human Pez dispenser at her beck and call. In a perfect world, I was supposed to say, ‘look at me,’ and whenever she met my gaze, I was to give her a treat. It was all about timing, which would have been relatively easy if Dixie had gone along with the program, but she did not.

Me – “Look at me, Dixie, look at me.”

Dixie – Up yours. I am going to stare at the treat bag and bark

Me – “Look at me, Dixie, look at me.”

Dixie –I demand that you give more treats. You will give them to me because I say so, and I will sit here and bark until you give me some.

Trainer approaches – “Oh. I see we have a demand barker.”

Me – “Duh!”

Demand barking can be likened to a child whining or throwing a tantrum to get something. That was fitting for what I knew of Dixie early on. She was a bossy pants, and I was the one she was trying to boss around.

The trainer kept telling me to give Dixie treats to reinforce looking at me. I am not a dog trainer, but I’m afraid I have to disagree. I felt that tossing her treats when she was barking, whether she was looking at me or not, would perpetuate the problem. How was Dixie supposed to differentiate getting cheese for looking at me from getting cheese for barking at me? I asked the trainer about it, and she told me to keep working on engagement and eliminate the demand barking at another time. I still beg to differ.

I was somewhat – make that completely – embarrassed by Dixie’s behavior in class. Her barking was disruptive, to say the least. I was so glad when the class ended so I could take my bossy, stubborn puppy home. I was humbled. It was anything but the stellar performance I envisioned. In my mind, all I accomplished was planting a demand-barking seed that would grow into a full-blown trend.

I took Dixie to a few more classes, and she continued to bark her way through. It was virtually impossible to hear the instructor over the loud barking. It was so bad that the trainer put a barrier between the rest of the class and us during the fourth class. I kept trying to teach Dixie fundamentals, and she kept barking for treats. Putting up a barrier was the last straw for me. We were not getting anywhere, so I opted to drop out of the class. She was far too disruptive. Dixie did not get the excellent puppy award I envisioned. She got nothing, and that is precisely what she earned. Nothing.

That puppy class was the beginning of Dixie’s career as a trainee. Since then, she has received so much training that it is not even funny. Calling her stubborn is an understatement. She is a good dog that will not give up until she gets what she wants; if she does not, she will throw a little tantrum and bark until I walk away. To her credit, she has improved quite a bit since then, and I see success on the horizon. That is excellent news. After all, we have only been working on it for a year.