Make it fun

Since when does learning stuff have to be boring and almost machine like?  I remember those classes in school, and as my memory serves me right I didn’t learn too much in them.  It was the classes I could have fun at that I learned all the stuff that stayed with me.  Sure 1+1 was beat into my head so much that I still know that it equals 2.  But the classes that were fun are how I learned why it equals 2.  The learning of why, means that I can forget that 1+1=2 and still figure it out.  Puppies’ brains are in fact different to ours, but are they really?  Why wouldn’t they want to learn stuff in a fun environment?

I have been playing (notice I didn’t say working) with my new puppy Boss for a little more than a year now.  Our only goal in life is to have fun together.  Maybe it’s going to the park, or maybe we’ll go to the beach.  Maybe we decide to stay home and throw the ball in the back yard.   The simple goal is having fun together.  Before you know it, that bond is so strong that walking down the road, your puppy stays by your side simply out of love and wanting to see what fun thing you come up with next.   Boss is my service dog, a job that requires the utmost of training.  I’m not training him at all; we are just having fun.

The act of playing fetch with your puppy is often considered just a useless game.  With the commands built in, and the repetitive nature of the game, it becomes a way of teaching your dog to get things, bring things, find things, give things, drop things, and leave things.  By playing with different objects, your puppy can learn the names of the objects.  By more than one item being in the yard, you can have them distinguishing between those items.  If you play with more than one person, the dog can learn to find a specific item, and bring it to which ever person you chose.   That is a lot to learn from a useless game.  The best thing is that your puppy is having fun and learning to have fun, and building a stronger bond with you.

 If the key to a living creature is its soul, then bring it out and it will love you for it.