Graduation Day

My little boy is growing up.

Charlie had his final exam Saturday at his puppy class when he needed to show he could follow the commands we learned over the class.

He passed. I'm so proud.

In all honesty though, Charlie still needs to work on everything. No, I'm not a Tiger 'dog' mom, but he's so young that if you don't continue to practice his lessons he forgets.

Although he has sit mastered when he's alone with me, he still needs to work on sitting when people come to visit and needs to work on not jumping when greeting, etc.

The issue if now, do I continue to work on this stuff myself and hope he turns out to be a well-mannered dog or do I sign up for intermediate level training classes?

It can be so much money and in some cases I feel like you can teach them the tricks and commands yourself. The key is to repeat the lessons daily.

So I'm looking for suggestions—if you've taken your dog to a training class, where was it and what was your experience? If you haven't and instead trained them at home, how did you do it and if you used books, which ones do you suggest?