Training Lucille

Lucy has been in our family about a month now I guess.  We love her. She's ours.  So far she is has been a fairly good dog, very smart.  She learned crate training quite easily.  It took about 3 nights of letting her "cry it out" and since then she has done awesome and now we don't have to get up with her at all... she sleeps through the night.  I'm teaching Lucy a few basic commands... she is good at "sit", is learning "stay" and "off". For being so young I think she is doing great on walks.  Cesar Milan has taught me the best way to walk her and she does great... she gets distracted if the kids are going on the walk with me as they always run ahead and therefore she wants to as well... but I think she is learning who is the alpha in this pack!  She also took to her bed very quickly.  Wherever we put her bed, she usually chooses to lay. 

All this being said, there are a few behaviors-- completely learned since being in our family-- that I am hoping to nip in the bud as soon as possible and therefore am exploring different training options.  The biggest problem is nipping.  Naturally, to play, puppies nip each other and when a puppy nips to hard, the other pup yelps and then ignores its playmate.  Well, this is a hard thing to learn in our family.  While I think she is learning how Dan and I will play with her, she doesn't understand as much from the kids.  The kids run around, try pushing her off of them when she nips (she just sees this as physical contact which she assumes is playing), and drop food accidentally all over the place.  Other behaviors we want to fix right away are begging (this just started and no doubt from food droppings), trying to take a chew dirty laundry-gross-, grabbing diapers-super gross-.  Of course, these are all things that puppies and owners go through in the beginning and while I feel like I can teach her to do things, I have no clue how to teach her to stop doing things.

We are in love with this puppy and our children but it is very difficult to be consistent with our commands when the kids are around... she is just so excited to have them play with her and frankly, the kids don't know how to teach her what's right and wrong. 

So, we are looking into training options.  We could do a basic puppy class-- which they've informed me the whole family is encouraged to come and participate... totally laughable!!  Can we say 'nightmare'?.  We could do a private trainer or we could do a sort of boarding school where she can go for two weeks to learn the basics and how to listen in a consistent environment. 

Maybe our situation is not unique but I sort of feel like it is in that we have several young children and a young pup.  So, I'm not exactly sure which training route to go, but I do know that we will be doing something.  We have years with our Lucy and we are committed to having a dog who will listen to us.

Here is Lucy with her two favorite toys... her rope and her bunny.  She seriously loves this bunny and frolics all over the house with it, pouncing on it and jumping all around with it.  The rope is a good tool for when she tries to chew on something... if we just replace her target with the rope, she is happy.  We love our puppy so much and want her life and our lives to be in sync so that we can enjoy one another and know what to expect of one another.  Hopefully we can find the right training for us all!