Sometimes it’s totally appropriate to lick your classmates

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

One member of our family meets weekly with her friends, and everyone else pitches in to make sure she gets her social time. It’s not who you might think.
Ruthie, our 8-month-old puppy, gets chauffeured Tuesday nights to “puppy pawties,” where she cavorts with Buster and Miley and Cody and Bailey and a roomful of other canine comrades. 
Ruthie loves it so much, she’d drive herself there if she had opposable thumbs.
Each time, there’s a brief puppy version of cocktail hour, with mingling and hugging (and slobbering and rear-end-sniffing). Then it’s down to business with basic obedience commands to learn and practice. And then more play fighting, neck biting and pouncing, ending with each puppy getting weighed on the veterinary scale, equipment that causes anxiety for many pets.
There are field trips to local pet-friendly stores such as Lowe’s and Tractor Supply Co. 
And there’s homework.

​Our puppy loves it, our daughter loves it, and we find it’s a major mood-lifter to be around peppy puppies of all shapes and sizes. It’s especially fun to watch the apprehensive ones gain confidence and learn to enjoy themselves with new peers — kind of like a four-legged Dale Carnegie course, or the last 20 minutes of a middle-school dance.
Susan Ertel and Elaine Wingo host the puppies at Country View Pet Hospital, which has been sponsoring puppy socialization classes for a couple of years. Susan and Elaine are patient and understanding teachers, even when a pupil pees on the floor.
Well-socialized dogs are easy to spot, Susan said, because of their confident body language and pleasant disposition. They make safer and more enjoyable pets. That’s because they’re more comfortable in various circumstances and therefore less likely to behave fearfully or aggressively when they encounter new situations, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Socialization is crucial for pets that will regularly meet children and steady streams of adult visitors. Ruthie the puppy, a rescue from the Clinton County Humane Society, is still learning manners and self-control around visitors, but our goal is for her to grow up to become like our older dog: trustworthy around toddlers but still an appropriately protective pooch.
Because children are able to attend puppy class, even households that might not have kids traipsing around are able to help their pets feel relaxed around young ones. And the children learn how to properly participate in the process.
“You want (your dog) to be a good family member — it’s a win-win situation,” said Susan, the author and illustrator of “Belle: The Hound That Was Found,” a children’s book about the basset hound she rescued and later trained to be a therapy dog. 
“That’s kind of how my journey with all this began,” said Susan, who has had Belle for 10 years. Susan and Belle started with basic obedience classes, followed by training for Belle’s testing through a national therapy-animal program called Pet Partners.
One major animal-therapy goal is for the dog’s behavior to be predictable in all kinds of situations, so socialization especially comes into play for therapy dogs.
Belle has been a regular therapy dog at Holmes Elementary School, Clinton Memorial Hospital and the Foster J. Boyd Regional Cancer Center. In February, though, Belle underwent surgery, followed by chemotherapy for cancer, which later returned. Belle is doing well, Susan said, but is now retired from pet therapy.
Belle no longer mentors at puppy classes either, so Susan and Elaine sometimes borrow a class member or invite successful alumni back to school. A couple of weeks ago, Zelda the sheltie showed the class how her owners had kept working with her long after puppy socialization was over. Zelda’s amazing obedience skills caused the rest of us holding goofy, gangly puppies to watch with envy. 
Still, it was inspiring to consider how far a dog’s behavior can advance with consistent practice, kind of like realizing your toddler could someday earn a degree from Harvard Law.
We’re sure that Ruthie has Ivy League potential, but the humans in our house have to put in the effort to make sure she does her homework. That’s a little more of a challenge.
Already, though, Ruthie has shown great progress. She’s not at all afraid of getting weighed on the scale, and she bounds into the vet’s office with extraordinary exuberance. For Ruthie, a trip to the veterinarian is like a walk in the park.