Hi everyone,
ive got a bichon 11 week old and enrolled her on a puppy training class that starts next week?i enrolled her ages ago and am now a bit worried it will be a bit early for her.  shes tiny and only weighs 1.7kgs!!do you think i should wait a while or is it the earler the better?!!thanks!
Gemma

Can't see it doing her any harm as long as the other dogs are well controlled.  For my breed it's the sooner the better.

I believe firmly that the sooner they get socialised the better it is for them. Don't be surprised if it takes a few weeks for her to realise why she's there though. ;-)

when i went to watch the class before it was quite well organised!its just that pups can go there up to 8 mnths of age and a bit worried a huge 8 month old dog scares her!!somehow cant imagine her 'sitting' and 'staying' at the mo!!

It's fine age wise, as people have said, the eralier the better.

Some classes insist the pups have had their puppy vaccinations done though, so you'd need to check that.

11 weeks is quite young...and she sound absolutely tinytiny!
But then again,my puppies have been weighing about 9kg at 8 weeks :)...

But as the others say it will be good to start socialising the puppy.
What we did with our puppy was to go to the training field when they had normal obedience training on,we just watched and said hello to nice calm dogs and the trainers...
We felt it is better to socialise her with adults who already know how to behave instead of "brainless", clumsy youngsters!

So at 5 months, when she went for her own puppy classes, she already knew the place and was old enough to have little patience. She had also had some training at home so we could get as much benefit as we could of the classes.
If you planning to keep up with going after the puppy classes I can not see any harm going with her now just to get her well socialised (even if she might be little too young to be able to consentrate for the duration of the class)
You just need to be careful not to let other boisterous puppies to scare or hurt her by accident as some puppies can be very clumsy and not know their own strenght yet.

If you have doggy contacts and are taking her out and about already, maybe you could wait for few more weeks and enroll her for the next puppy classes they have?
I'm sure the people running the classes would understand your reasons for delaying it a little.

Hi Gemma. Agree with the others, the sooner the better. My pup was very small as she is a tibetan spaniel, but I took her to puppy classes as soon as I could, she was 12 weeks old and though she was tiny she enjoyed it and has def. helped her turn into a very well socialised dog. All the other dogs in the class seemed huge.!!. The biggest problem we had was trying to get her back from all the children who were fussing her.!! cos she was very cute and knew it.. I am sure that your puppy will be fine and that she and you will have a good time.
Anna

i started puppy classes with my very small breed at 11weeks old,i cant remember how much he weighed then but he now weighs 3kg fully grown! he was really good and soon got the hang of it. he made his best doggy friend there a newfoundland! they still see each other every week and both of them are in competition class now. :-)

I took my puppy when she was just 10 weeks old.  Although she hadn't had her second set of injections, the hall was not used by other dogs and all the puppies in the class has had all their injections.  I asked the vet and he said as we live in a low risk area her would prefere a puppy to start young and be socialised!  She seemed really small at the time but she loved making friends, best time to do it when they are young.

I keep toy breeds, and believe in socialising with large dogs, although some toy breed owners don't like them to be around big dogs.  I have an adult toy weighing 1.15kg and she happily plays with my Collies.  IMO getting them used to larger dogs stops them from being snappy, yappy little urchins, simply because they're not afraid of the big dogs.

How absolutely true JeanSW.
For most of my dog-owning life I've (nearly) always had big powerful dogs and have been very critical of toy dog owners who never let their dogs socialise or in anyway interact with larger dogs. They would then claim that their little ones got spooked at matches and such-like by anything non-toy. I'm rather torn now, however, as for some years now I also have toy dogs - all of which 'muck-in' with their larger family members.  At doggie gatherings and out walking I've now started to get twitchy about large hooligans upsetting my littlies. They ( the toys) on the other hand absolutely LOVE big dogs and have no inhibitions with them at all. I've started to become an over protective Mum!!
My two new babies were snogging a large greyhound today and chalked up another good experience.