Last night Atlas and I attended our first puppy middle school class in Putney, Vermont. I’ve been looking forward to starting him with training for months, and finally a class started that worked well with our schedule. For a nearly 6-month old puppy, he’s truly a great pet. He’s friendly, extremely brave (as witnessed by his bold body hurl into a pack of 15 labs at puppy day care over the weekend), and does his best to be a good boy. That said, he has picked up a few bad habits – stealing any flip-flops/shoes and mouthing them, pulling at my clothes and jumping, and not really responding to his name when I ask him to do something. And as I learned last night, he whines/barks when he’s very frustrated (in this case, because he wasn’t allowed to play with all the interesting looking dogs in the room).

Overall the class went really well and I was impressed that Atlas seemed to learn everything so quickly. He did even better this afternoon on our lunchtime walk. All of the games we learned (that are associated with commands like “stand”, “leave it”, “trade” and “wait”) were completely applicable as we walked to the end of our road, and Atlas is definitely responding to his name now since he knows he’s going to get a treat. There’s also something very primal about tearing up hot dogs or roast beef, rolling the pieces in your palms, and feeding them to your dog.

I also learned a bit about myself in the course of the training class. One example is that I’ve learned I am capable of losing my temper, causing my voice to raise a bit. I also start to yell when my patience is totally gone. I really don’t do that in other areas of my life – I tend to be a pretty timid person, and have a lot of patience. I’m actually scared sometimes to lose my cool because of perceptions on that behavior in our society. But when Atlas is being a pain in the butt, I’ve been known to lose it completely. This scares me and I’d like to – like his jumping and biting – nip it in the butt.

I was impressed as I watched our trainer calmly tell my dog to stop doing something, and calmly praise him afterwards. It’s a lot easier said than done – in the midst of your dog chewing your fancy shoes, it’s easy to start screaming and chasing after him. But in reality, he responded way better when I calmly offered something else as a “trade” or ignored his behavior completely. The class is also teaching me to get some of my life back, to assert some of my own rights over my dog, and show him who’s leader of the pack. I think so many of these things are not only applicable to dog training or even raising children (though having a dog has made me question even having kids once or twice), but also to everyday things that happen in my life.

I know Atlas is going to learn a bunch and have a lot fun in our class, but I think, as many dog trainers claim, the class will really “train me”. Hopefully the other “training” parts of my life won’t require as many raw hot dogs and string cheese :o).