![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Last night was already week 5 of obedience class! Next week may be my last one. *sigh* I won't even get to see her "graduate" if they can't switch us to another time. Stupid f'in Columbia College. Maybe I'll have to call in "sick" the last class. Well, there's a thought.
At any rate, class last night went really well. We started with doing some basic exercises...sit, down, and now stand. Stand is easy enough to teach for MOST dogs, but Dahlia doesn't seem to get it all the time. She looks at you like "wtf I was JUST STANDING, you made me sit and now you want me to stand again? why??? you're just going to make me SIT AGAIN." At any rate, standing is accomplished by holding the food in front of their nose and forcing them to move forward toward it. The problem with it is that if you hold the food too high, they see it as "sit." If you hold it too low (which David often does), they see it as "down." So it has to be "just right." We did get her to manage that.
We then moved on to doing some walking again in the aisles. The challenge this time was to get the dog to stop with you and then sit still to your side. Dahlia got it on the first time around! I was so pleased with her. And then when Colleen came to see her do it she did it perfectly again. ROCK ON. Then we had to do a "leave it" with a stuffed toy. Dahlia didn't even look at it and I explained to Colleen that she's NOT a toy dog. She didn't care about it because it wasn't food. So we did it again with a treat tossed down near here and this time she went right on by it, passed with flying colours. Colleen said to us, "she's really the perfect dog, isn't she?" We couldn't agree more!
Our last goal for the class was to start teaching "come." The way she did this was to have her sit down and Colleen held her while David and I showed her a treat, got her all excited (or, at least, as excited as Dahlia CAN get) and then called her to us, making her run down the aisle at full speed. She did really well with it both times that Colleen did it with us.
The real stars of the show this night, though, were Bacon (the American Staffordshire terrier) and Miley (the "yorkipoo"). Miley has a real fear-based reaction to both people and dogs. And all of a sudden, she just kind of slowly walked over to Bacon and Bacon, who is the most submissive dog EVER, rolled over at her feet. She was showing so much more confidence! Colleen got Miley's owner to reward her whenever she did something brave, so maybe she's starting to come out of her shell some more! It was nice to see.
After the class, Dahlia got to meet an utterly adorable Aussie puppy (omg I was dead from the cute -- so fuzzy!!) and then got really playful in the parking lot. We ended up running her back and forth playing fetch for a little bit. It was great to see!
At any rate, class last night went really well. We started with doing some basic exercises...sit, down, and now stand. Stand is easy enough to teach for MOST dogs, but Dahlia doesn't seem to get it all the time. She looks at you like "wtf I was JUST STANDING, you made me sit and now you want me to stand again? why??? you're just going to make me SIT AGAIN." At any rate, standing is accomplished by holding the food in front of their nose and forcing them to move forward toward it. The problem with it is that if you hold the food too high, they see it as "sit." If you hold it too low (which David often does), they see it as "down." So it has to be "just right." We did get her to manage that.
We then moved on to doing some walking again in the aisles. The challenge this time was to get the dog to stop with you and then sit still to your side. Dahlia got it on the first time around! I was so pleased with her. And then when Colleen came to see her do it she did it perfectly again. ROCK ON. Then we had to do a "leave it" with a stuffed toy. Dahlia didn't even look at it and I explained to Colleen that she's NOT a toy dog. She didn't care about it because it wasn't food. So we did it again with a treat tossed down near here and this time she went right on by it, passed with flying colours. Colleen said to us, "she's really the perfect dog, isn't she?" We couldn't agree more!
Our last goal for the class was to start teaching "come." The way she did this was to have her sit down and Colleen held her while David and I showed her a treat, got her all excited (or, at least, as excited as Dahlia CAN get) and then called her to us, making her run down the aisle at full speed. She did really well with it both times that Colleen did it with us.
The real stars of the show this night, though, were Bacon (the American Staffordshire terrier) and Miley (the "yorkipoo"). Miley has a real fear-based reaction to both people and dogs. And all of a sudden, she just kind of slowly walked over to Bacon and Bacon, who is the most submissive dog EVER, rolled over at her feet. She was showing so much more confidence! Colleen got Miley's owner to reward her whenever she did something brave, so maybe she's starting to come out of her shell some more! It was nice to see.
After the class, Dahlia got to meet an utterly adorable Aussie puppy (omg I was dead from the cute -- so fuzzy!!) and then got really playful in the parking lot. We ended up running her back and forth playing fetch for a little bit. It was great to see!