{"id":1140,"date":"2012-03-15T08:18:05","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T21:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2021-08-02T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T07:02:09","slug":"puppy-classes-dunbar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/puppies\/puppy-classes-dunbar\/","title":{"rendered":"Puppy Classes (Dunbar)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See\u00a0index<\/a>.<\/small><\/small><\/p>\n

Dunbar-style puppy classes aim to teach puppies bite inhibition<\/a>, allow one (of many) venues for human socialisation<\/a>, and teach owners to control their dog off leash.\u00a0 They should be conducted offleash, inside on hard (sanitisable) floors, and with big and little dogs in the one class.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dobermann<\/a>

These dobermanns are playing offleash – an important learning experience for them and their owners.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bite inhibition<\/span><\/p>\n

By puppies playing with one another, they are learning rules for dog-dog interactions and also the appropriate force of bite while playing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Socialisation<\/span><\/p>\n

Puppy classes only form part of the socialisation picture.\u00a0 While socialisation happens in puppy classes, it is too little too late.\u00a0 There is a lot of work the owner needs to do before puppy class, and puppy class won\u2019t make up for undersocialisation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Control Offleash<\/span><\/p>\n

Often the lead can become a \u2018crutch\u2019 for dog owners, and they cannot get the behaviours they want without this level of control. By training off leash<\/a> from the outset, the puppy and owner learns to work with distractions and use them to their advantage. Our control needs to be independent of a collar and lead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dunbar is often credited as the father of puppy classes, but he has become concerned about how puppy classes are currently run.\u00a0 Particularly, most puppy classes are on lead, and most puppy classes use too much food and never phase the lure<\/a>.\u00a0 To Dunbar, 10 minutes of offleash play is simply not good enough for a puppy class.\u00a0 Puppies need to learn to remove themselves from play, and humans need to learn how to engage in dog play and make dog-dog play a valuable\u00a0reinforcer.<\/p>\n

Of course, we use food to train puppies, but the food should be faded immediately.\u00a0 Furthermore, off leash behaviour will allow an experience trainer to note puppies with problems and start to address them sooner-rather-than-later.<\/p>\n

Dunbar stressed that puppy classes are only part of the socialisation picture. The next post will talk about what puppy buyers should be doing immediately on bringing a puppy home<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Puppy classes: How they should be run according to dog trainer Ian Dunbar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[254,6],"tags":[381,12,164,11,382,21,20,379,380,47,53],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-training-dog-behaviour","category-puppies","tag-bite-inhibition","tag-dog","tag-dog-training","tag-dogs","tag-off-leash-play","tag-puppies-2","tag-puppy","tag-puppy-class","tag-puppy-classes","tag-socialisation","tag-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4928,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/4928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}