Freighter and Sunny graduated from Puppy Kindergarten last night.  This was a great class for the puppies to learn new things and to socialize.  In addition to basic obedience, the puppies were exposed to a lot of new things.  For example, during one class the instructor sat in a wheel chair and approached the puppies in a friendly manner.  All of the puppies were fine with the wheel chair, well Freighter tried to get in the instructor’s lap because he was eyeballing her treat bag.  🙂

Before every class the pups got to play on puppy sized agility equipment.  I think Freighter is getting a bit too big for the puppy sized equipment. 🙂

If the video doesn’t play try here.

Sunny Making The Ramp Thing Crash And Freighter Jumping For A Treat
Freighter Liked The Wobbly Board
Anything For A Treat

Since it was the last class, they played some games.  One of the games was musical chairs with hula hoops.  It was a lot of fun.

When The Music Stops Puppies Need To Sit In The Hoop

They also gave ribbons for the puppy that did the longest sit stay, the longest down and the fastest recall.  All of the pups did great, and Freighter hung in there, but did not get a ribbon.  🙂  Sunny won the longest down.  Good going sis!

Sunny With Her Ribbon
The Graduates With Their Certificates

What would graduation day be without relatives in attendance?  This is Uncle Radar.  He is one of Thunder and Tule’s pups.

Radar

He has spent a lot of time at this training club.  He earned his Rally Excellent Title last year.

SRR's Flying Under the Radar RE

Thanks for coming Uncle Radar.

We have a busy weekend of training planed.  Sunday one of the Clubs that we belong to is having a training day and Thunder will get a shot flyer.  He really hasn’t been on birds since last Fall so the timing is good because we have him entered in a UKC Finished test in early May.

Have a nice weekend!

24 thoughts on “Graduation Day”

  1. Yay! Congratulations Freighter and Sunny! Freighter does look like he’s getting a little big for the puppy sized equipment. What a good training method the playing musical hula hoops is. Nice job on the long stay Sunny! Hope you have a terrific training weekend! 🙂

  7. I think Freighter did a great job, you can see that he enjoys what he is doing and you can also see how close he and Sunny are!!

    I love your puppy obedience class. So much that I want to fly out there and learn from them. Your puppies are introduced to so many more things than the classes I’ve seen out here. Do you think they would train me?

    1. I don’t know that they train their instructors exactly. This is a training club. It is made up of members who love to train obedience, rally and agility. They offer these classes to help pay for the building and the events that they put on. The instructors do not get paid so in that sense they are volunteers. They have many years of experience working with their own dogs and have put together their classes based on their experience. I think each instructor teaches the classes they like, whether it be puppy, rally, or obedience. I know I have seen them refer to outlines, but I am not sure who put those together. A couple of years ago they asked us to join this club. If we had more time we would, but we can’t join every club…lol.

      Anyway as an aside you might be interested in this. Remember the two “problem” dogs that I mentioned in the class after ours? One was a doberman and one was a tervuren (I think). I don’t know what happened to the tervuren because I have not seen it in a couple of weeks. Maybe it dropped out or went to private lessons. But the doberman stuck with it and you cannot believe the change over the last couple of weeks. A dog that was lunging at every other dog and what I would consider dog aggressive now sits nicely at its owner’s side. Talking to someone in that class, the doberman was a rescue and had a few owners before its current one. The guy only had it a couple of months before he started the class. He really has turned that dog around from what I can see. I will tell you though that while they train with mostly positive reinforcement, they will teach leash correction, which I saw once on that dog a few weeks ago. The last couple of weeks there didn’t seem a need despite another dog barking and lunging at the her, she just sat nicely. I am not saying the leash correction did it, but I think it was a combination of all of the training. One other thing that they did was put it in the center of the floor to work so that it did not have to worry about dogs to the left and right and that seemed to lessen anxiety.

  8. Yay for Freighter and Sunny – Congratulations on your graduation!!

    You did great on the agility course Freighter, it looked like a piece of cake for you, I hope you got some yummy treats even if you didn’t get any cake! Tee Hee

    Have a fun weekend,

    Your pal Snoopy 🙂

  9. Congrats to both you and Sunny. It has been so fun to watch you go through the class. It is good your humans do videos for us too. Cant wait to hear about the weekend.
    Bert

  10. CONGRATULATIONS!! I do think he has indeed out grown puppy sized stuff. He is so handsome. Have a great weekend.
    Blessings,
    Goose

  11. congrats on completing class successfully 🙂 Are you planning to do a next class, or start in with hunting dog training classes?

    1. We will do the next class but probably not until Fall/Winter. Freighter will do some hunt test training in between and we will continue his obedience at home.

  12. Congrats! I know I’ve said it before, but that really sounds like an awesome puppy class there.

  14. FINALLY catching up!! 😛 Sorry we haven’t visited in so long but I’ve been enjoying going back on all the posts I’ve missed and catching up on your news!

    I am just SO envious of your training classes – they look like the best I’ve ever seen! Seriously, I wish Honey could have gone to somethign like this – I love how they introduce all these other things to the pups, not just “boring” obedience – especially things like balancing on the wobbly board is just so important for helping them cope with different surfaces and gaining confidence with balance, later on in life. I’ve tried to do myself what Honey missed out on in class by always encouraging her to try different new experiences – but it does help a lot when you get in early.

    The pictures are just adorable – I love the one of Freighter and his sister, posing with their ribbons – look at the smiles! 🙂

    Congratulations!

    Hsin-Yi (& Honey the Great Dane)

    1. This is the first puppy class we have done at this training facility. We have taken their regular obedience classes, but not the puppy one. It really was so much fun for the puppies and great socialization too.

  15. Oh! I don’t know what happened – our comment disappeared! Maybe it’s gone into your Spam folder?

  16. Congratulations! They look like they had a lot of fun doing it.

  17. Such awesome videos!! I can’t believe how big Freighter is oh my goodness!!! Love the photos, his coat is just beautiful 🙂

    CONGRATS TO FREIGHTER AND SUNNY!!! WOOHOO!! Hope you guys have a great weekend!

  19. congratulations! puppy-sized agility equipment–i love it!! and that hula hoop game is a great idea. looks like you had a really nice class.

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