Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Learning as we go

Petunia has been a very challenging dog to raise! She is the worst garbage mouth I have ever seen and is a high energy dog. We were about at out wits end with her so we did some dog swapping for a few days with another raiser in our club.

After working with petunia she reminded us that it is important to praise what she does Good and not to just punish the bad. We do this with our son and don't know why we forgot to do it with petunia. So I send this out there for all those raisers struggling with difficult puppies... Remember to give them lots of positive reinforcement as they really do want to please us.

Below is a picture of Maybell, whom we watched while petunia was at "naughty dog boot camp".

2 comments:

lindsey said...

Petunia's brothers Parker and Pierre are in my club. They are both quite the handfuls! Very willing dogs, but can be rowdy and at times out of control. It must run in the family :) Sometimes it's nice to just have a break and a little perspective that no puppy is perfect!

Lisa and pups said...

Oh that's so easy to forget - and like lindsey said... sometimes all you need is a break to help you remember and get some perspective. And it's so nice to have other puppy raisers to help remind us of that! :)