Puppy Not Behaving at Daycare

[em1126]

I have an 8 month-old lab mix puppy that goes to doggie daycare once a week. Yesterday when I went to pick her up they asked me to bring her in with her choke collar on next week b/c she's jumping and clawing at everyone b/c she's so excited to be at daycare. The thing is, she's pretty well-behaved at home, but she just gets so excited and out-of-control at daycare it's hard to do anything with her. How can I make the training we do at home carry over to daycare?

[Hello Kitty]

They will just have to correct her at daycare when she's around other dogs. If you're comfortable with them, I'd let them use your slip collar so they can train her to be a little less excited around other dogs.

Our dog is very well behaved, but when meeting a dog in an obvious play situation, she just gets way over excited and wants to play. The situations are SO different for some dogs. Some things we've done are: tire her out before she's in a play situation; use her training collar to have her sit, and be introduced to the other dog quietly; NOT hype up the experience; use the leave it command along with correction (we do this a lot when we encounter other dogs on walks - she learns that you don't always play with all other dogs, and most of the time you have to just behave around them). HTH!

[katiadarling]

I would ask them to discuss their exact plan of behavior modification with you before you bring in your choke collar. Having worked at a doggy day care, often times there are so many dogs around that I don't think training at that time is even appropriate or feasible. If they plan on doing slow intros with the training collar... a dog or two at a time (and with the other dogs on leash as well) that might be a good thing. In my opinion it isn't usually a good thing to have one dog on leash around a bunch of other dogs that are running free.... just my two cents though.

[mjfish]

I would ask them to discuss their exact plan of behavior modification with you before you bring in your choke collar.ITA. You want to make sure that they don't keep it on her while she is playing, just so they have "something to grab" if she gets too wound up. You definitely don't want to let them allow her to drag a leash around attached to the choke either -- both scenarios are very dangerous.

What kind of training/commands do you use at home? Let the daycare people know and ask them to do the same. Can she be put in a smaller group so that she doesn't get so wound up?

SK -- Hi!!! How are you?? Someday I'll get over to LJ...

[NotDesperate]

When I was considering doggie daycare for my dog for once or twice a week- their rule was that I had to bring him at least three times a week, hopefully four or even five for the first week. This way the dog got used to being there really fast and then when you bring it down to once a week, the dog is much calmer.

Maybe you could try that.