For this episode we return to an article that was on the Kennel Club’s website which suggests that puppy classes and social play sessions are responsible for increasing reactivity and aggression in pet dogs.   The article focuses on poorly managed classes, and uses this as justification for condemning the whole concept.  The Dunbars explain how a well-run class or socialization session is actually the best way of preventing reactivity and aggression, and creating friendly, easy-to-handle and reliable adult dogs.  

In this iWoofs episode we address an article that appears on The Kennel Club website, by Robert Alleyne, a Board member of the Kennel Club Accreditation Scheme for Instructors.  As major advocates for puppy classes you can probably imagine that we have a few bones to pick with this article.  We find many of the assumptions to be flawed, along with much of the reasoning and the conclusions.  We do agree with the article that there are some puppy classes that are not as good as they should be, and we agree with some of the criticisms that are made of poorly managed classes. 

A listener has a sweet three-your old Rottweiler that likes to mouth people. He’s never hurt people, but the owner recognizes that this is a potential problem. With a large, potentially intimidating dog like a Rottweiler it’s a particular pressing problem, because people may be very scared.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in dog training, mistakes which will make any method or exercise significantly less effective.  Dog training is complex and requires some important skills, it requires some patience, persistence and timing.  Also, there’s something about dogs which tends to short-wire some people’s critical thinking skills.  Probably the biggest problem people run into is expecting too much from their dog, too quickly.  They don’t recognize the incremental improvements, which means they don’t ca