What Comes After Puppy Class?

Most families who bring home a Labrador aren't looking for a new competitive hobby. They're looking for a dog to be part of their family. I think there's a lot contained in that phrase: part of the family.

Training certainly matters when you're living with a large, active sporting dog. But I don't want to train my dogs only so they're easier to live with at home. I want to be able to do things with them. Sometimes that's a training class or an activity specifically for the dog. Other times, the dog is simply coming along for something the rest of the family was already doing.

You don't need to become a “dog sport person” to keep learning with your dog. You need enough of a foundation to start doing more things together.

Household Manners Are the Beginning

Most of the training we do with a young dog starts out pretty practical: come when I call you, don't drag me down the street, wait at the door, settle down and, please, stop putting that in your mouth.

Those things matter. Living with an adult Labrador is considerably more pleasant when someone has put some effort into teaching him how to live in a house. Those same skills are also what begin opening the rest of the world to him.

A dog who can walk reasonably well on leash, settle when nothing interesting is happening and pay attention to you around distractions is much easier to include in everyday life. You can take her to an outdoor event with the kids, bring her along on a weekend away, walk a new trail or sit somewhere and watch the world go by.

Those aren't dog sports, but there's a lot of training happening there. You're teaching the dog what you expect in different environments, and you're learning what he needs from you. Every new place adds distractions and experiences you can't reproduce in your living room or backyard.

Classes Give You Another Way to Learn Together

I still really like training classes even when competition isn't the goal.

A puppy class can lead into family manners or more advanced pet-dog training. You can keep working on the skills that make your dog easier to include in your life while learning how to communicate with her more clearly.

At some point, you might also try something simply because it sounds fun. Introductory scent work is one of my favorite examples because you don't need an extensively trained dog to get started. The dog gets to use an ability that comes naturally to him while the human learns to watch.

You can't smell what your dog smells. As he searches, you start noticing small changes in his behavior and learning what he looks like when he's working something out. Instead of directing every step, sometimes your job is to trust that your dog knows something you don't.

Scent work can also be a nice confidence-building activity for a young dog. A well-run introductory class gives him opportunities to investigate, make choices and solve problems without requiring an interaction with every person or dog in the room.

Six weeks of scent work can simply be six weeks of learning something new together. If you both love it, there are opportunities to take it much further.

Dog Sports Are There If You Want Them

Some people take a class and discover they really enjoy training. That's when the dog-sport world starts offering all kinds of directions to explore. Competitive obedience, rally, agility and tracking generally require more training and handler skill. They're wonderful options for someone interested in developing those skills, but they aren't the logical next step for every family coming out of puppy class.

There are other activities that can be relatively easy to sample. A Labrador who already loves launching himself into water may have a fantastic time trying dock diving, for example.

The point isn't to work your way through a list of sports. It's knowing that these opportunities exist. A class, workshop or introductory event can be exactly that: an opportunity to try something new with your dog.

Training Makes a Bigger Life Possible

This, more than dog sports, is why I want families to keep training their dogs.

A Labrador doesn't need to go everywhere with you. There are places where bringing a dog makes an outing unnecessarily difficult, and there are dogs who genuinely don't enjoy certain environments. Inclusion shouldn't mean dragging a dog through situations he's miserable in because we've decided a well-socialized dog should be able to handle everything.

But there's a big difference between choosing to leave your dog home and having to leave your dog home because he never learned how to behave anywhere else.

Basic skills create options!

A dog who has learned how to walk with you, settle, ride in the car and handle new environments can become part of more of your life. The experiences themselves also give you opportunities to keep practicing those skills in the real world.

Variety matters, too. New places bring different surfaces, smells, sounds, people and expectations. A dog doesn't need constant entertainment, but experiencing more of the world gives him opportunities to adapt, think and learn.

It Doesn't Have to Look Impressive

There can be a tendency in the dog world to measure what we're doing by accomplishments: titles, classes completed, skills mastered. That's not what I'm talking about.

A hike counts. A training class counts. Going to watch your kid's game and practicing settling on a blanket counts. Swimming, retrieving, exploring a new trail or spending ten minutes learning something unnecessary in the kitchen all count.

The common thread is that you're doing some of life with your dog, and you've put enough training into the relationship to make that possible.

Over time, that builds on itself. You learn how your dog thinks and what he needs from you. Your dog learns what you expect. You get better at communicating with each other, and experiences that once required a lot of effort start becoming ordinary parts of life together.

That's the relationship I want families to build with their Labradors. There are plenty of ways to get there, and it doesn't require a job, a sport or a title. It starts with teaching your dog enough that the two of you can go do something together.