The Puppy Foundation Course

Daisy is a super friendly little dog, but her unfortunate start as a rescue has left a couple of odd quirks. Chief among these is a tendency to get over excited around other dogs, and assume that they all want to play. It's quite sweet at the moment, but I do hope she grows out of it; other dogs give her the benefit of the doubt right now, but once she's a little older I'm not sure quite how that's going to work out - I can see them getting grumpy with her. So I thought I'd enrol her in the Kennel Club's Good Citizen Dog scheme to see if it helped,  as the idea behind the scheme is to end up with a happy, healthy, well-socialised member of the family. The focus is somewhat different to the requirements for competitive obedience, so hopefully by taking the two things together I can have a well-behaved dog around the house and on walks, who is also able to do the canine equivalent of dressage.

As I've possibly mentioned before, I'm incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by high standard training clubs, so I actually have a very good training club locally which focuses on the Good Citizen Scheme (Ashlawn DTC). I invited myself down to their sessions one evening and had a quick chat with the head instructor, who is not only a trainer of very many years experience, but also a member of the Academy of Dog Training and Behaviour. I was super impressed with their set up and Erica's passion for what she was doing, so signed Daisy up for the beginner's course - the Puppy Foundation Class. I then made it to the introductory class, at which we got chapter and verse on the best collars and leads, toys, grooming material...basically everything you need to keep your pup in good condition and happy. Managed to miss the first proper training session due to a short notice hospital trip, but will be there next week, complete with my little hooligan, to see how we get on.