Thursday, October 21, 2010

The problem with short term memory loss...

Who would have thought being a Puppy Instructor trainee could be so challenging?

I thought having two puppies was tiring. Try dealing with about 20 puppies all wanting to play non stop. Their owners are still learning how to "recall" their beloved munchkins so when it comes to putting all pups back on their leads, let's just say it gets very noisy. Pups have the attention span of a gnat so getting them to come when called is very challenging especially if they don't yet recognise their own name!

Last Saturday we had three classes in a row. I was meeting everybody for the first time.
Now I am one of those people who when confronted with a big group of people for the first time, have difficulty remembering everyone's name. People are very flattered when you do remember their name but slightly insulted if you don't.

At Puppy School you have to remember each owner's name (and the rest of the family who come to watch), their puppy's name and its sex. If you multiply this by 20, you have at least 60 variables to remember. Not good if you suffer from short term memory loss!

Someone gave me a sneaky tip. Just surreptiously fondle the puppy's underside while talking to the owner and this should give you a good idea of the sex. At least you can get that right while you try to remember his or her name. Last week there was quite a parade of names from Snoekie, Storm, Milaika, Bear, Dube, Zoey, Yusef to Gun. Shew!

Short of writing names on the palm of my hand, I am going to need to get some magic muti to boost my memory cells.

2 comments:

  1. Our Eukanuba Puppy School, now Teenager School Instructor, gave us sticky name tags at the beginning of the lesson for the first two lessons. It had our name and our dog's name underneath.
    He knows ALL of us by name and history!

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