How I ALMOST Ruined My Relationship with My Puppy

The way we choose to train our puppies can have long-term effects on their mental well-being, and behavior! Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trusting some “experts” who guided me to make training decisions that almost ruined my relationship with my puppy. Let’s dive into why it happened to me and why it often happens to other well-intentioned pup parents. My wife and I got our 2nd puppy to try and give our 1st puppy a friend and playmate. While it was a great decision overall, we were in over our heads… We were first-time pup parents and we truly didn’t know what to expect. And we certainly didn’t know what we were doing! Feeling overwhelmed by our puppies’ behavior, we decided to enroll in an in-person training class (this was before 30 Day Perfect Pup existed). The group that hosted the training class was full of trainers with decades of experience, awards, and reviews. Simply put, it sounded legit to us! On orientation day (without dogs present), we were informed that we would need to use a choke chain for our dogs. They called it something else, but it was a metal slip/choke chain. While both my wife and I didn’t feel great about it, we figured since they were experts with lots of experience it would be fine. Fast forward to week 1 of the actual training class. A middle-school-sized gymnasium was filled with about 35-50 puppies and their pup parents. It was clear through observation and conversation that many of the pup parents were in the same boat as us. Feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and downright unsure of what to do with our young puppies. And you can imagine the level of chaos in the room. Puppies lunging toward other puppies, instructors trying to teach over the sound of dozens of barks, and many pup parents seeming to struggle to just keep their dogs from running every which way. From day 1 of instruction, it was a LOT of corrections, collar pops, and generally unpleasant techniques. While there were some teachings about how and when to reward, the focus was on corrections and stopping our dog from doing “bad” things. But we believed it would get better, and we didn’t have much of a frame of reference… so we kept going. Looking back now, it was clear that our puppies were overwhelmed, stressed, and confused every time we went to class.  There was little to no learning going on. As the class progressed, our puppy Scout didn’t seem to be progressing (not surprising). Leash walking was still a challenge, she didn’t focus in class, and it seemed like nothing was working. One of the trainer's recommendations was to put her on a prong collar. A 3-month-old puppy. Luckily we didn’t. Our puppies loved other dogs and puppies. They wanted to go up and interact with all of them during the class hours! The trainers instructed us to give a collar pop/correction whenever our puppies lunged or pulled to go toward other dogs. Fast forward to 1 year after this class, and we were struggling tremendously with Scout’s reactivity. At the time I didn’t understand why, but now that I’ve learned more about dog behavior it was clear those constant corrections helped make Scout reactive. It took us months (pushing on years) of hard and stressful work to overcome that reactivity. While it is extremely frustrating to look back and realize those trainers set us up for failure, there are some lessons I learned that hopefully you can apply to your relationship with your puppy!