Hi all,

Just added a new dog to the family...she is a four month old German Shepherd, mostly working lines with a little German showline thrown in. Anywho...she must be the most stubborn thing I have ever come across lol! She is doing well with my other female GSD(age 4) and Cairn Terrier (8). They have very limited playtime together, always supervised. I keep the puppy in our chainlink kennel until she ignores the other dogs and then I let her out. Is this o.k.?

Also have her enrolled in puppy class at the moment...that sure makes me appreciative of how well trained my other GSD is let me tell you!

She has learned sit (working on automatically for food/toys/treats & before going out the door/gate) and down. Also working very hard on leave it...very important for a teething pup.

Well, now that I wrote a book, my question really is how long of an attention span should a pup this age have? She is working well under distraction of cats/people/etc at home, but was crazy for the other dogs in dog class and wouldn't sit/down at all...please keep in mind that I don't expect her to be perfect and that puppy class is really for socialization more than training at this age. I'm also thinking this will improve as she becomes more bonded to us.

Thanks,
Melissa

A pup of this age is lucky to have a 4 or 5 second attention span. We dont let our pups be around our adult dogs (unless it is an adult that IGNORES the pup) There should be no play time together. Play comes from you - at least if you expect to train.

It sounds to me like you may want to read the article I wrote on HOW TO INTRODUCE A NEW DOG INTO A HOME WITH OTHER DOGS.

Just in case it helps,

here's the link for that article
http://www.leerburg.com/introducingdogs.htm

Thank you Ed. I have read the article and as time goes on I am developing a better understanding of it as well. Ahh...so much to learn!

-Melissa