Part of our contract with our breeder states that we agree to enroll in puppy kindergarten. I’m happy to do so but it’s obviously a different ballgame with Covid. Any recommendations for online classes?

Hi Mama! I'm guessing you already read this? Hmm, I didn't realize Fenzi Dog Sports Academy had puppy classes. I've enjoyed their classes. It's great you're pursuing classes for your puppy! (And don't forget about Kikopup videos on youtube! Here are 29 FREE lessons in three hours of video!)

My breeder recommended the Bella and Baxter online program. We are attending a small group puppy school in person so never looked into this personally. Good luck!

https://www.baxterandbella.com/learn-more

Unfortunately, a big part of the point of puppy K is socialization... which is not possible with an online class. And one of the advantages of grouping like-age puppies together for classes. OTOH, it can sometimes be hard to find a puppy K with the right mix of puppies so that a small breed puppy doesn’t get overwhelmed by large, boisterous puppies, so there are some hurdles to navigate anyway.

Have you discussed the options during Covid with your breeder? Fenzi Dog Sports Academy is too notch, and I believe a new session is starting now. I am not sure whether they have a puppy offering this session or not. (I just looked, and don’t really see anything current that looks like it will fit your needs, though you will get to the “Teenage Tyrant” stage sooner than you think! LOL!) Susan Garrett has another excellent online school and also offers a good puppy class intermittently. With both, it depends on whether the timing will work for you. FOR SURE sign up for both Denise’s and Susan’s blogs, and go back and read everything both have written about puppies. Especially Susan. It’s not that Denise doesn’t KNOW about puppies, but her chosen breed, Tervs, are SO different temperamentally from Havanese that a lot of what she deals with in her puppy that she is now raising is just not relevant to our dogs. Susan’s Border Collies, while still not the same as Havanese, are not the level of intensity of bite sport dogs. (The classes at FSDA are taught by many different instructors, with many different dogs, so don’t let Denise’s breed choice dissuade you from the classes)

The Fenzi pet dog program is here with LOTS of useful info: https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/29570

The Fenzi self-study classes are here, with two appropriate puppy classes to work through: https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.co...red-self-study

I take Izzie out to dog-friendly stores so she meets other people. We also take walks so she gets to see other sights like the fire truck, sirens, and loud vehicles. I don't force Izzie, I just let her engage things at her own pace. It may not be the best idea but it works for us. I am doing online puppy classes with Courteous Canine located in Charlotte NC. I like it because we get one on one attention. We are a multi-dog household so she came in adapting to other dogs. I do notice that she likes our family dogs versus the neighbor's pack of dogs/puppies.

I will start checking out all these resources, thank you. It’s amazing how much preparation goes into bringing a puppy home! I know it will all be well worth it in the long run and I guess it is nice to have puppy-related things to learn and do while playing the waiting game 🙂

Our breeder recommends canine frontier online classes. I did reach out to them but have not heard back yet, I figure if we are going to invest time and money into classes I should make sure I choose wisely. I wish there was just one clear and obvious choice.... but that is so rarely the case!

Thanks for the ideas!!

Thank you!! Will definitely check out kikopup!

I live in Colorado Springs and take Rosalita to Puppy classes at All Breed Rescue & Training. We wear masks and are at least 6 feet apart. One of the trainers knows Havanese well. Her parents raise them and she showed them. She said Rosie is smart and confident, so much so that she was moved from the small size puppy group to the big size puppy group. She was intimidating the other small puppies with her play so my 6.5 pound puppy graduated with a pit bull, German Shepard, and a retriever. She had a blast playing with them during socializing time. She's not afraid of anything.

I really appreciate all the resources posted here because even with the class we're now in, she is getting hard to deal with. Maybe watching some of these videos will help me. Or maybe you all can help.

She sleeps in late with me and we go for a walk around noon. She'll nap and play off and on during the afternoon but in the evenings she goes nuts. She barks at us for no apparent reason, pulls on my clothes...socks, sleeves, etc and nips my arms and legs. As I stand at the kitchen sink she grabs my leg with her front legs and bites the back of my thighs. When I'm sitting down she grabs whatever we have on tables...masks, coasters, paper towels, napkins, papers, etc. I play fetch with her and do some training but as soon as we stop she goes back to her irritating behavior. I call her Cujo.

She'll be 6 months Dec 2; is this the adolescent I've been reading about? Or am I doing something wrong? HELP please.

Do you have an expen?

What I found is that when my puppy was feeling wild, what calmed him down was what many on the forum call “brain work.” Just 5-10 minutes of working on skills wore him out and then he’d sleep while I got hours of work done. One game that he really loved is hiding treats in a muffin tin. I saw a YouTube video on it so there are a few you could look for, but I modified it to make it take longer. I used different shaped balls on top of the muffin cups, and some are harder to move than others (tennis ball, squishy stress ball, dryer ball). I also used a big muffin tin instead of a small one, because hiding a couple of treats in the middle section provided a challenge in that he had to figure out how to get to them.

Redirection of the nipping to something he can chew (we used bully sticks) helped a lot. Is he still teething?

Also watch when he is nipping and other times when he wants attention for patterns that might indicate he’s trying to communicate. Mine nipped when he needed to be taken outside. Once I realized that, I noticed he would sit near my feet or pace around them for a minute before he started nipping so it was easy to eliminate the negative cue.