The Fun Police

I get to go to school! 

Apparently it isn’t enough just to be cute… you have to learn stuff too.

Remember when we stopped and got a picture with Santa the other day? Well that place is a dog school and they have puppy classes. The idea is that you (humans) bring puppies (that’s me) to a room where we learn basic stuff like how to sit and lay down and pay attention to something other than our phones for awhile.

Most of it is pretty interesting, and I’m pretty good at it because mom and dad have been working with me from the beginning, and my practice mom and dad worked with me before that.  But there’s one part of class I don’t like very much. Playtime.

The classes start and end with puppy playtime.  It’s when all the puppies are released at once into the room to play together. The teacher says we have to play naked, but it only applies to the dogs.  All the people are allowed keep their clothes on, but all the dog collars have to come off. I think that’s so we don’t read each other’s tags and try to get phone numbers and stuff.  Nobody likes a puppy stalker.

Anyway, you’d think it would be fun right?  Not necessarily.

The first playtime was pretty rough. Some of the other puppies have a pretty, um, aggressive play style.  I was out sniffing and looking for treats when WHAM! a boisterous boxer pup who much bigger than me just bowled me over!  Then when I was getting up I got torpedoed by another dog, and then he and the boxer tag-teamed me and chased me as I ran for cover under dad’s chair. 

Every time I’d come out from under the chair, they would blast me and I’d have to run for cover again.

I didn’t think that was fun. Dad wasn’t too happy either, but it was our first class and he wasn’t sure if it was normal or not.

Eventually, playtime ended and we started to learn stuff that didn’t involved being knocked down. That was the part I was good at, since I’d been learning things all along. I knew how to lay down on my mat, and I can sit on command and respond to my name, and do other things. 

(Oh, did you notice that orange is my color?  I had an orange harness on when mom and dad brought me home, and we decided to just go with it. So I have an orange mat, leash, collar, etc.  I’m fashionably color-coordinated.)

At the end of class we had another puppy ultimate fighting free-for-all, I mean playtime. But this time I was ready.

You see, I’m a bit of a thinker.  I like to study what’s happening and decide how I’m going to play before I actually play.  I guess it’s an aussie thing, but I don’t know how to be any other kind of thing.  

I got chased under the chair again, but then I’m came charging out with gusto and started barking at the other dogs and having a great time.

But apparently that was wrong too.

The teacher didn’t like me barking and said that aussies are, “the fun police.”  Fun Police? Huh? Dad didn’t like that description either.  I’m not anti-fun, I’m just anti-punching bag, ok?

They also made comments about aussies being “all business” and not playing much, which is a little disheartening.  Dad knows better though.  I play with Raven all the time, and I’ve played with the dogs in Oklahoma and also our neighbor’s puppy. I like to play.

Fun Police. Hrmph. 😠 

Dad says we should chase her under a chair and see who’s the fun police.