Puppy School Dropout

Well I never said I was SMART…

Perhaps I am more of a SMARTASS.  Whatever you want to call it, mum packed us off to puppy training class and I was admittedly kind of (OK, completely) terrified.  The room was huge, the sound reverberated all over, there were people I didn’t know, and I really, really wanted to play with the other dogs.  But the instructor put us both in a pen with sheets around us to try to calm me down.  And I wasn’t having it.  Despite copious amounts of string cheese and peanut butter (which was awesome, by the way), my tail would not come out from between my butt cheeks, and so we were booted from puppy class.

At first, we were hurt.  A little upset.  But then mum and I decided that maybe it just wasn’t the right fit for us.  And that’s OK.  While it certainly would have been easier if it was the right fit, sometimes you don’t get to choose those things.  And I do have some (according to mum) irrational fears of new people and buildings to work through, so this may have just been a case of too much, too soon.

Lesser teams would have driven home, hid under the covers, and consumed mass quantities of snacks.  This is not a bad strategy.  However we are no lesser team.  No, no, no.  We drove straight to Petco, where I am getting slowly used to walking around.  This directly confronts my two current greatest fears – new people and buildings – but combines it with tasty things to eat, and smells that I can’t resist.  So we did a quick scoot all the way around the store, mum bought me a bag of Charlee Bears for the ride home, and we decided to just get over it.

It’s OK.  Don’t tell her, but I like spending all of my time with mum and doing our training together.  She gets that I’m not the fastest learner, but we work through things slowly.  So neither of us get scared.  Win-win.

Love,

Otto Fizz