Training

Well, we have had our puppy since September 9th, 2009....
He is a mini labradoodle and is incredibly smart. He is housetrained at the age of 4 months (w/very occasional accidents) and he knows a few commands (shake, sit, down, come). I say that it's because both poodle and labs are very smart breeds.
Anyway, as soon as I agreed to have a puppy, I realized that it would take a lot of time to train the dog, take it on walks, attend vet appointments, etc. However, I didn't quite realize how much time you have to spend on training. See, I thought I would go to training class, they will teach the dog what to do and then I would reinforce it during the next couple of days and voila....Wow, was I living in a dream.

We's already been through one obedience class and we are on the next level and even though he is doing great, oh my goodness, he requires a ton of time.

Unlike my assumption of what training will be, we go to class once a week, the owners are taught the tricks and behavior that dogs need to learn, the owners are trained on how to communicate w/their pets to obtain the right behavior and then the class is dismissed. We are given homework, where we have to train our puppies EVERY day...Yes, we have to dedicate about 30 minutes every day to train our dogs! It doesn't seem like 30 minutes is that long, right? Well, when I wake up at 6am (keep in mind, I am not an early person), then go to work, come back for lunch only to take my puppy out for a break and a quick walk, and then head back to work until evening at which point I rush back home...take my puppy to the off-leash dog park for an hour and a half (or until his energy runs out) and then come home...Brovi loves attention even when he is tired, so we usually play for about an hour after we come home...So, during the whole day the first time I get to sit down and just relax for a few minutes is at about 7:00pm....by then I really have no motivation or energy left to try and train him on any tricks or obedience....Well, last week has been not so good, we haven't done much training....But usually I try to make a point during the day to dedicate sometime to just training....Next week will be better!!!