We work with kids all the time around here at Fidleio Dog Works. Almost every family wants their children to be involved in working with the dog and that’s a great thing. The more the kids work with puppies and older dogs, the more the relationship becomes cemented and the stronger the bonds become.

There is a downside though. Kids have short attention spans, and puppies have shorter attention spans. Sometimes this can cause a bit of friction in the house. When working with your kids, remember to keep the sessions very short, usually 2-3 minutes works great for this. These short sessions are fantastic for the dogs as well.

With puppies, it’s always better to train more times per day for shorter segments. We would much rather have you do 10 sessions of 2 minutes than to sit there and try to get the puppy to work with you for 20 straight minutes. It’s just to much for their little minds to take in most cases.

Along these lines, I’m posting a link to a video of my daughter and me working with a schnauzer pup on the “Place” command.

You’ll notice that the puppy and the daughter have roughly the same attention span on this. Still, I’m proud of both of them. The puppy learned the place command perfectly and my Daughter isn’t bad on the command either! Now, if she’ll just do that when she turns 16…..

All my best,

Steve Haynes
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogblog.com