The Book of Ramblings

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!

On Tuesday we took Dahlia off to obedience class again. She had a LOOONG nap in the afternoon, so she was much more lively at class this time. Not that she was as hyper as any of the other dogs there, but she was definitely more alert and active. And she was all about cleaning up any crumbs dropped on the floor during training, which was pretty amusing.

We started off class with just getting the dogs to sit and pay attention -- prepare them for "working." We then did a switch up where each of us took someone else's dog and got them to look and sit and tried to get them to behave a bit better. We got Bacon, an American Staffordshire Terrier. Bacon is an incredibly affectionate, sweet dog, but he's also REALLY hyper and active. After spending the first little bit just trying to get him to stay more still, I finally got him to look at me and then sit down. He was VERY attentive at that point, though still kind of nuts. He's definitely a lot more hyper than we would want to deal with. The woman who got Dahlia (Bacon's owner), was like "wow I got to enjoy just petting your dog instead of having a dog in my face all the time." Yeah...Dahlia's cool.

We worked on "leave it" after that and I was amazed at how quickly she learned this! The first thing we did was show her a treat and then fold our hand around it while saying "leave it." When she turned her nose away or relaxed or did anything other than try to sniff your hand or get the treat, you gave it to her. The first time we did it, she sniffed for a few seconds and then stopped. The second time, she just looked at us like "ok mom, I get it." Then we had to do it with holding their collar while putting the treat on the ground...same thing, when she relaxed, we gave her a treat we were holding in our hand and picked up the other one. The concept is that sometimes there is going to be something on the ground she wants that we don't want her to get -- and she's NEVER going to get it, hence not giving her the treat on the ground. She got that one pretty quickly too.

Then we worked on stay. Dahlia already has this pretty well down. I make her sit and stay whenever I leave in the morning and whenever we come back from a walk (the door swings toward us, so she has to stay far enough away from it that I can open it easily). Our goal is to work up to 30 seconds this week and eventually beyond that. I think she can actually handle that. I've been doing it for several seconds now and she's just stayed and stared at me. She looks SO border collie when she does it too. We're using the word "break" to get her out of the stay and that's still taking some work. Sometimes she's insistent on just STAYING rather than moving so we're getting her to move at the end of it.

Our only issue came with walking. We were told how to start training them to heel. And then we were sent off into our own aisle. Well, Dahlia would NOT pay attention at ALL to us...she wanted to sniff things, had no interest in our treats anymore. Colleen eventually came by and brought out some of her so-called "doggie crack." And amazingly, she worked for that! So we walked her up and down the aisle some and then brought her back to the training area.

Overall, she did really well. Since then, we've been working on her with all of this and she's doing BRILLIANT. We're able to put a treat on the ground, say leave it, and have her look up at us. We're able to make her sit and stay...and I'm able to make her leave things on the walk with the leave it command. She's an awesomely smart doggie and is catching on so quickly. I've been taking walks with a little bit of treats in my hand and I have her undivided attention. The true challenge will come when we face down another doggie. I hope I can get her distracted from the dog and paying attention to me instead. I'm really very excited at how she's doing!

Colleen says that Dahlia is a total food hound. She was SO interested in everything she did as long as she had some treats in her hand. Food really works well for this dog!

On a strange sidenote, Colleen has Dahlia pegged as a timid, somewhat clingy dog. She thinks that she doesn't want to leave our side (she actually will, she's just stubborn) and I don't really consider her timid. She's a pretty confident dog, just hates loud noises. And getting shocked. Oh poor girl! David went to show her a treat and touched her nose and she got a shock. For a little bit after that, David couldn't put his hand near her nose without her flinching back a little but out of nervousness. But I still don't really think she's a timid dog, per se. Maybe more cautious than some others, but not timid.

I think I've mentioned before that we signed Dahlia up for obedience classes at Petsmart. I was starting to think we really needed it. When we walk she's usually pretty good, loose leash and all, but not when she gets excited about something. Generally, two things make her excited: Squirrels and other dogs. She gets stubborn and pulls on the leash and will NOT listen to a word you say. If you try to tug her away with any sort of leash corrections, she LAYS DOWN and won't move. She can be a real pain when distracted.

So last night, it was off to obedience class.

Well, she's a real star compared to the other dogs there. The class consisted of two pit bull type dogs, two boxers (though one is too young and is going to be at the puppy class starting next week), a St. Bernard, a Yorkie, some little black dog (maybe a toy poodle but it was shaved down so it was hard to tell), and Dahlia. The pit bulls and boxers had WAY too much energy. They whined and cried and skidded around and tried to rush over to greet other dogs. The poor women who had them there could barely control them. It turned out that the owner of one of the pit bulls had agreed to take the dog when her son decided he didn't want it. And the other owner of the pit bull hadn't really wanted a dog -- her husband did and so he just brought this dog home. And guess who ends up getting to take him to obedience school? Nice, eh? The boxers belonged to a family who had 4 boxers all together. The little toy poodlish dog was a bit of a mess -- separated too young from her mother, growled at people when they came too close, especially when she was on the woman's lap -- it was total fear aggression. The St. Bernard had a TON of issues, including a fear agression in reference to other dogs. She was kept a bit separate from everyone else and under tight control by the owners. The only dog that was calm and as well-behaved as Dahlia was this little Yorkie named Oliver. He let out a couple barks, but settled down and slept most of the time. Dahlia proved her "defender" personality again. When the other dogs would get hyper and move around a lot and bark, she would stand up, let out one bark and then settle down when they did. She especially did this when one of the dogs kept trying to jump on another. I'm not sure if it was a bit of herding instinct (like "hey sheep...settle down!") or her trying to stop the dogs from going nuts on each other.

In a totally ironic twist, the person who owned the St. Bernard was a high school/college friend of mine. I kept looking at her thinking, "is that Joanna?" But I wasn't sure. Until they said her dog's name was Piper, which was Joanna's maiden name. And then she was looking around the room, looked at me, and said "Michelle?" Yep, it was Joanna! It was good to see her after so many years. Hopefully we'll get to catch up a bit at some point. I'll need to get her e-mail address.

Much of the class was spent with fitting up the hyper and fear-aggressive dogs with haltis and explaining their use. She asked if we wanted a harness or a halti for Dahlia, but agreed that she thought we probably didn't need it. And honestly? I'm totally against it for her. She is a little stubborn, but not terribly so. I think we can train her with the regular collar. I could revert to a harness if we felt we need it, but I don't want to deal with a halti. You have to leave it on the dog a lot and I want her face free, not covered in some halter thing all the time. I much prefer just a standard collar.

While she was doing some orientation things, Dahlia just basically settled down and practically fell asleep. She got really comfortable there and just lounged.

We finally got around to working on our first cue -- "Look." It's the basis for everything else. And it makes sense -- get the dog to pay attention to you and then you can give them another command. It seems to work so far, but I want to make sure we can get her to do the look command without there always being a treat the end of it. So I'm working on doing it just with praise at home as well.

Overall, I think it went rather well. Everyone seemed to love Dahlia and be impressed with her calmness. The trainer (who, btw, had a lot of training experience -- she's been doing classes like this one since 1986!!) mentioned at one point that everyone should bring a chew toy so that when she works with another dog, they have something to keep themselves occupied, "except Dahlia," said while Dahlia was flopped out on her side all relaxed and the other dogs were still going nuts. Yeah...she has energy, but not a ton of it. She's happy just relaxing. Every once in awhile I sit back and think "is she REALLY only 2 or 3," but then she LOOKS young and her teeth look very young too. So...I think she's just a mellow dog.

So, at any rate, that was the evening's fun! I'm looking forward to next week.