Well, this is a very exciting post for me to write because today I will be recapping our experience in sending our 1-year old Bernedoodle puppy to a 3-week board & train program.

To start, let’s take a little walk down memory lane, shall we?

We waited for a new puppy for over 6 months before we brought Kylo home but the actual bringing-Kylo-home process was a total tornado that we were unprepared for. I explain it in more depth in this post so you can go back and read if you’d like more context but basically, we were sort of thrown into welcoming Kylo home before we were truly ready.

It didn’t matter though. We knew we wanted him and were SO excited to have a puppy again. Spartan was a fabulous dog and I think I underestimated how much of that awesomeness was actually genetic and not just a result of my fantastic training (I’m being sarcastic … sort of).

As soon as we brought Kylo home, I knew he was a little different. To start, he was NAUGHTY. Spartan had naughty moments but he was always a really chill dog, even as a puppy. He loved to snuggle and just take naps … like most puppies do. I’ve never seen Kylo take a puppy nap before. Puppies are supposed to be like newborns in that they require a lot of sleep and spend a lot of their sleeping. Kylo was 24/7 energy – he never seemed to be able to calm down. If we let him out of his crate, he’d sniff around the ENTIRE time. Like for a full hour, just busybody sniffing everything, NEVER wanting to settle down and just chill.

We thought – okay, fine. He’s got a lot of energy. That’s fine. Didn’t we always say Spartan was lazy and kind of dumb? Kylo is more of a “real dog”, that’s cool. He’ll protect us if someone tries to hurt us, he’ll force us to get more exercise and be outside more. Right? RIGHT?

EH. WRONG.

Over the months, Kylo’s energy got more and more frenetic and slightly aggressive. He started guarding his food around all five of us. J & I did some research on how to help fix that and were able to get him to stop resource guarding around us adults but it was still an issue with the kids. He’d growl at them if they even walked into the same room as him while he was eating. Then, one time A got too close to him and he turned around and LUNGED for her with his snapping teeth. He was growling and snarling and if I hadn’t LEAPED in between the two of them I genuinely don’t know if he would have tried to bite her or not. Which is really sad because out of the three kids, A had the most interest and affection for him.

It also didn’t help that we brought him home at the end of February and then two weeks later the entire world closed down. During what should have been a critical socialization period of his development, he didn’t get exposed to ANY people or stimuli outside of the five of us at home. I think that really hurt him in the long run as it made him even more neurotic once we did start trying to take him places (or even going to standard places like the groomer or vet).

Anyway, we spent most of 2020 trying desperately to train Kylo. It’s one thing to be a high energy dog and another thing to be a constant ball of nervous/crazy energy with NO visible signs of slowing down. He did a total of three different puppy training programs that were all somewhat successful but didn’t really do anything to help solve our overall problem which was that he needed to be “managed” constantly. We couldn’t just let him out to chill/roam in the house with us because he was always aggravating the kids (nipping at them constantly, jumping on them repeatedly despite knowing better) or going into bedrooms/playrooms and stealing kid toys. A lot of that sounds like normal puppy stuff except that there was no reprieve from it ever; he never slowed down. He’s the definition of the energizer bunny. It’s not like he’d do puppy antics but then get tired and lay down to take a nap. He was like a puppy on crack. So we survived by always putting him in a pen/crate with no chance of coming out OR on a leash next to us. Not a lot of fun for us OR for him.

All that to say, we were a crossroads with him. Not all of it was his fault, part of it was us not really knowing how to train him best or teach him appropriate behavior. But some of that is also just that I’m not a professional dog trainer and the group puppy classes obviously couldn’t be catered 100% to our dog the entire time. Towards the end of last year, Hubby & I sat down and had a heart to heart. I told him we either needed to rehome Kylo to a family that didn’t have any kids and/or an owner that was really experienced with training dogs OR we needed to send him to a professional training facility for some real help. To be honest, I was leaning toward the former … but J was really insistent that we not give up on Kylo yet. In his words – “He’s part of the family now for better or for worse.” Awww …

So we did some more Yelp-ing, researching, vetting and found an amazing person who runs a board & train out of her home. She had tons of experience working with dogs with all types of issues, from aggression, fear, anxiety, etc. We shipped him off right after Christmas for 3-weeks with her and kept our fingers crossed ….

And he literally came back home to us a brand new dog. Okay, that’s an exaggeration haha, I can still see parts of his original personality and his goofiness that we like. But he is just … SO WELL TRAINED. The big things that the trainer worked on him with during the 3 weeks were a solid “place” command – meaning that he has specific spots all over our house (this portable bed is just one) that if we tell him to go to his “place”, he will go and STAY for HOURS until we let him off the command – and general obedience commands like heel, leave it, out (drop it).

The big takeaways that we learned about Kylo were:

• He needs structure. He wasn’t exactly unstructured previously (as in, he wasn’t just free roaming all the time) but we didn’t really know what to do with him so he was just always confined somewhere or attached to us with a leash. Giving him solid commands that he knows and can follow not only gives structure to his day but builds up his confidence because he earns food/treats for obeying correctly. I guess, according to the trainer, a lot of that constant “nervous” energy was stemming from him literally not knowing what to do with himself. He didn’t know HOW to relax.
• Earn your food. We know from our previous puppy training classes that nothing should come free to a puppy. Every pat, every moment of play, every bit of food needs to be earned. But it was really mind-blowing to take that concept that we knew and see it put into practice with Kylo. The trainer gave us some really helpful tips (like put his entire day’s worth of food into a pouch and then feed throughout the day from the pouch as reward for obeying commands) that have shifted our entire thinking in how we approach Ky and his feedings.

I honestly don’t know how our trainer did what she did .. I mean if I knew how she did, I’d probably have saved ourselves the money and done the training myself. All I know is that he’s home now and while obviously he’s not perfect, he is so much more CHILL. He knows how to just RELAX. Like I mentioned, we have spots all over our house (including his own crate) that are his “place” and last night, I didn’t even put him in a “place” command but he went to his bed by himself and just hung out there all night after dinner.

His crate where he sleeps at night is next to my office and he spent most of the day yesterday just hanging out in there…. with the door open. For that one, I did put him in a “place” command but he was happy to just chew his bones and hang out in there! The kids were in and out of the playroom, even playing right next to his crate, and even though his crate door was open he never once got out to tangle around with them.

It’s only been a few days since he came home so we’ll see how this holds up in the long run but so far, it’s been an amazing couple of days with him back. We have another follow up lesson scheduled with the same trainer – she always comes back after a week or two to see how things are progressing and if there are any new issues to think through/train through – but I have high hopes that going forward we won’t have as many overwhelming problems with Kylo. And also, as he gets older and calms down out of the puppy energy (he’s technically a “doggy teenager” right now) hopefully it’ll be even easier to have him as a part of the Sophisu fam. YAY!