more thoughts on balanced puppy training

So my goal with Hickory is to do a bit of housemanners training, a great deal of socialization, and lots of ground work for obedience, rally, and agility.

My shortcomings with my last 2 dogs have been with socialization (with people and other dogs) and familiarization with strange environments.

Both have been a function of running a dog-training center, preparing to sell that dog-training center, giving up trialing while moving and setting up our new dog-training center, injuring my knee, etc., etc., etc.  In other words, LIFE got in the way of doing the right thing for my dogs.

Hopefully Bud and I can share responsibility for Hickory, with Bud managing the agility training and travel to new environments, and me handling housemanners and socialization.

Hickory needs to be walked in local stores and around trial sites.  He needs to do attention and obedience work at the park, in the tractor supply store, in the pet food store, on busy sidewalks, etc.

Maggie was pointing out that Piper had tons of obstacle familiarization but hadn’t been subjected to a lot of stress (like being in a kennel run with a bunch of barking dogs) and hadn’t met a lot of people, so he tends to shut down easily in the presence of those stressors.

The flip side is a dog who gets a lot of manners training and a bunch of socialization, but who doesn’t get to experience a variety of equipment set-ups, who trains at home (like our dogs, for example).

Tags: basic dog obedience, Bud Houston, dog agility, dog performance sports, Marsha Houston, puppy training, rally obedience, sport obedience