This morning Hardy and I attended his first class at Canine Affair Center - a basic obedience and manners class with Mary. There were two other dogs, both adults - a very large 1 1/2 year old Wheaten Terrier and a Golden Retriever. We worked on watch me, sit, down, stays, come front and left finishes. Hardy was terrific! We worked particularly on sit from a down; something he seems to have forgotten. Although we didn't work on walking during class, we worked on keeping a loose leash walking into and out of the training hall.
Hardy is still exploring the house and loves coming across one of the cats; neither of whom is nearly as happy to see him! Apparently Laurel's foot is bothering her because she is taking it easy all by herself. Tomorrow I'm teaching my first Introduction to Training Levels class so I am working hard to get ready!
Welcome to my blog, From Puppy to Public Access. Selecting and preparing a puppy to train as a service dog - the most important time in a service dog’s training happens long before the dog is ever ready to learn his job; it is the stage commonly known as “puppy raising”. Join me as I journey from finding a puppy through raising that puppy in the hope that he will become my next service dog. (Photo credit - Jack Powers)
Well done Linda and Hardy! We weren't paying a lot of attention to sit from down while you were away, so it is not a surprise that he has had a little blip there. One thing that professional trainers know well and a lot of beginners forget is that if you have trained a dog to do something they have to keep practicing it in order to keep it. If you neglect a behaviour for a couple of weeks, it starts to get rusty. The foundations are still there, but the fluency goes away. Another thing that the pros are really aware of is that the second time you teach something to a dog, it goes much faster than it did the first time; and a good thing too, or we wouldn't be able to maintain behaviours very efficiently.
ReplyDeleteEco and I are getting ready to go to John's Thursday afternoon levels-hope your first class teaching levels in Cleveland went well.
Sue