We very frequently have clients who wish for their children to be the primary trainers of the family dogs. As noble a goal as this is I’ve yet to see it work out. I think children are great but they rarely have the state of mind, follow through, work ethic, etc. to be the primary trainer or handler of the dog. They also typically don’t have the presence of mind to make sure that proper supervision is happening, reinforcement of good and bad behavior is taking place, and that the dog is getting enough repetition of desired training behavior.

During my career I’ve probably heard hundreds of times, “We got the dog for the kids but we are the ones taking care of it!”. Folks, this is reality. If you, as a parent, think you are going to get a dog and not be responsible for at least 80% of the care, training, feeding, cleaning, etc. then you’ve got another thing coming.

Now, one thing that we have been successful with here at CommuniCanine is helping kids integrate with training once the dogs are trained. While kids will rarely play any significant role in getting the dogs trained they can often ‘piggy-back’ on the efforts of the parents.

As a father and a dog owner I love both my kids and my dogs. I’ve got very real expectations, however, of what can be accomplished with both.

(As a bit of father pride I’m including a quick video I did a few years ago with my oldest daughter and two Golden Retrievers that belong to a client. Isn’t she the most adorable kid you’ve ever seen?)