Day Three of Class

Parker was reluctant to get into the car for yesterday’s class. Probably because I have a harness for him and he had not learned how to move around without getting hopelessly tangled. However, once he was in and belted (I said reluctant, not stubbornly refusing), he settled nicely into a sit and didn’t budge for the entire ride.

Class started with heel work. Although Parker is just about spot on perfect with this at home on his daily walks, in class he tends to be a bit squirrely. He sits perpendicular to me, probably the better to keep an eye on the other dogs. As for the actual heeling portion, he’s great, although one of the teachers pointed out that I should keep the left hand with the treat in it further in front of me or I’d end up teaching him to lag. In fact, throughout the lesson I kept hearing, “Move your hand forward, Dorothy.”

Then we worked on sit stays. Parker was great, although we hand’t done any work at home with moving back to the dog’s side by stepping around him, and Parker kept getting up. We’ll work on that.

Then we started doing down stays. Sadly for me, this meant putting the dog into a down. One of the teachers came over to me when she saw that Parker was sitting, now lying down and I told her we were taking a vacation from the down for a while, as my frustration levels were flowing down the leash. Happily she agreed this was a good thing. Of course when, later in the lesson, we were listening to one of the teachers explain the settle to us, Parker calmly lay down perfectly. Little snot.

We did a little work on attention. Parker and I have done Shirley’s Doggie Zen -- hold a good treat in one hand in such a way that the dog can’t get it. Once the dog finally turns away from the treat to look at you, which they inevitably do, wondering why this doofus won’t give up the treat, you click and give the treat. It hasn’t taken Parker long to learn this and now he stays focused on me, no matter what, never breaking eye contact. Clever boy.

The real job for me this week is to get more serious about training time.