Okay ... animation-newbie on the loose!

I made my first attempt at animating two figures using poser and my motions didn't come out anything like I expected. I'm pretty sure I'm having problems understanding keyframes in general and keyframe interpolation (linear vs. constant vs. break spline, etc.) For instance, my character would move past the point where I wanted him to stop and this caused him to interact poorly with the other figure.

Three questions:

1. Is there a good tutorial or document that does a really good job of teaching animation theory so that I know what the different interpolations are and why I'm using these things at different times?

2. Even more basically, should I even be attempting to learn animation in Poser or should I be saving up cash to buy a different program?

3. How do you help your bruised ego when you can't animate like a master on your first attempt???

-Dean