We train dogs professionally so this may sound odd to those of you reading this. We have trained numerous dogs that when sent home and then regressed back to the knowledge of their owner. This is a waste of money for the owner and time of the trainer. We believe in keeping training simple. If we can compare training or exposing a puppy to the same concept we would a child; we believe that one year to a human is equal to seven years to a dog. So let us look at that thought process for a minute. If we brought our child home from the hospital and put the child in a room for the first seven years, only vaccinating, feeding and watering the child with a little socialization from you and maybe a cousin or two. When the school bus came on the child's seventh birthday you put them on the bus to go to school with all the other children and noises and viruses, how would your child perform? Could we teach our child to do reading, writing and arithmetic in one day or even a week?

Elementary in a dog's life is from birth to six months of age. Junior high starts around six months to one year of age. High school is about one year to two years of age. College starts depending on the maturity of the dog, somewhere between two and three years of age. From three years on you should expect a polished dog that can adapt to the challenges that make them succeed in life.

We hope this thought process will be helpful in training your next German Shorthaired Pointer. We don't mean to discourage the use of a professional trainer, but you need to understand the method of their training. Let us go back to the theory of one year to a human is equal to seven years to a dog; then one day off of training or conditioning is equal to one week for your dog; and one week is equal to one month for your dog; nine months off is equal to five years for your dog. Professional athletes stay in shape and practice to bring out their best, so why shouldn't we do the same for our MVP (Most Valuable Pet)?