We have passed graduation! Really graduation was much easier than Trainer Jason hyped it up to be. That’s ok though. By the end of the class, there were 5 student dogs (we probably started with 10). All but 1 dog passed (this dog made improvements, but he still liked to lounge at other dogs/people if they got too close to his human).
We started with our heel, right turn, left turn and sit. We did a warm up sit-stay. I’m proud of Stella. Not only does she sit when I stop walking (she’s on about a 90% rate when we train), she also mastered her stay. Then we did the races. We raced on the paper plate recall game. The first round was Gracie and the greyhound, Sweetness. Gracie easily won. Sweetness got distracted and thought it was time for socialization so racing wasn’t even on her mind. Next up was Stella and a lab, Baubers. Baubers basically did the same thing that Sweetness did so Stella won. Boomer, the last dog raced against Sweetness and won and then he raced against Baubers and won. Then Stella had to race Gracie (Fierce competition). Gracie had Stella on the recall, but Gracie either didn’t sit or didn’t stay so Stella was declared the winner. (Stella then had to race Boomer, but Stella easily won). We all think it was pretty close between Stella and Gracie so they are sharing the title “Paper Plate Recall Champion.” (They don't mind though because they are BFF). Then the dogs had an extra long time of socialization.
Now that we’ve passed we can take Heineken through free of charge and we can also bring Stella back if she ever needs a refresher. I’m still debating, but I think Heineken will be a student in the next class.
I don’t think I ever blogged about my initial desire from dog school. My goals were simple.
1. I wanted to be able to walk both Heineken and Stella without fear (basically meaning if we saw another dog I wanted to be able to keep them in control). All the while retaining my arms. This does not seem like too much to ask.
2. I wanted Stella to stop jumping on me.
While being in class, my goals have expanded (I want Stella to listen to me all the time, I want Stella to be better behaved with visitors, etc).
So did training meet my goals? 50%. I still don’t feel that I can walk both of them enjoyably, but if I do try to walk them I won’t be so nervous about it. We can get out of the house without Stella screaming and this is a huge accomplishment. I also think that Heineken needs to learn to heel before walking both of them will be completely enjoyable.
For the jumping, Trainer Jason did tell us how to handle it, but it was very difficult to practice. Stella is such a spasoid that it’s hard to anticipate her jumps. But I do think the jumping is better but I think this is mostly because she listens to me better. So when she jumps, I tell her to sit and she actually does as opposed to before when she would just continue to jump.
Stay tuned because we will probably have Dog School Part 2 in the near future. I’m sure taking Heineken through will result in different challenges too.
