Novice Obedience - Week 4
We actually had a very good obedience class. Our heeling is getting better — still has a long way to go, but there was a lot less forging tonight.
In our group practices of changing of speeds, he actually stayed with me instead of racing to catch the dog in front of him. There was no real attention to me and he was a bit ahead, but it was a great improvement over weeks past. We heeled past 3 groups of distractions and while he glanced at them, he stayed with me. As soon as I released him at the end of the exercise, he made a bee-line for the last stuffed toy and picked it up. But hey, he had been released. That got a nice chuckle from the class.
We did some really nice figure 8s with “air cookies” I was having a hard time getting his attention before that, but air cookies seemed to do the trick. I also picked up my speed which helped a bunch.
Our heeling pattern left a bit to be desired. The instructor was too busy chuckling that she forget to give us the slow. She said he is so driven and it was like he was on a mission. He did a VERY nice job staying with me through the exercise and even the fast part. Put his head was focused straight ahead. He had somewhere to go.
Our stays, he’s still on high alert. During the long down I turned to the person next to me and asked if we could drug them before the exercise. Seriously if I could get him to relax just a bit, it would be awesome.
Overall, much improvement over two weeks ago. We still have a long way to go, but we’re having a ton of fun.
I asked what we should take next session — whether we should repeat novice obedience or go back and take attention for obedience again. Karen said he’s so high drive that going back to attention for obedience was probably beneath him and wouldn’t do much for him. But I needed to work the concepts of that class into our novice class. She says he’s going to be a lot of work, just cause he has so much go. But he’s still young.
We did have a complete breakdown about 40 minutes into class where he completely lost focus and was watching agility. It took about 5 minute for me to get him back and he started working for me again after that. Kind of the same thing that happened during our last sequence in agility the night before. So he may just need a little bit of a break before class is over.
