All it takes is a little encouragement

I forgot that I was ready to quit last week as I headed to class this morning.

I remembered as soon as we walked inside, but it was too late.

Parker went into a crate without a fuss as I went out to walk the course. There were several new signs and we were told that there’d be more new ones on the second one. Ugh. And that next week, we’d be doing the “back” exercise. To teach this, we were told, we needed to have the dog next to a wall or fence. With the dog in a stand, a treat in our left hand, we say, “back,” start moving back ourselves and give the treat as soon as there is any leg motion by the dog. We all worked on this for a few minutes. A few very frustrating minutes for me, so I was astonished, when we walked off passed someone who said, “He got it right away!” I literally looked behind me to see who the guy was talking to before realizing he was talking to me.

As we waited for our turn (why do they always make us go last?), Parker was fine. There was an “Honor” sign, so, since we were last, that meant we were first to do it. With the dog in a sit this time, and me on the end of the leash, he was supposed to maintain the sit for as long as it took the first course runner to go through the course. He really did that rather well until someone got too close to him. Then he would get up and come next to me. Not so bad.

Then it was our turn to do the course. While we were sitting (okay, you know that Parker was sitting, and I was standing, right?), the instructor asked me if I were having fun. Although this was a perfect invitation for a pity party, I maintained my cool and explained that I was having fun at home, but not so much in class, because Parker is really pretty good at home. Alone. With no one to see it but me. But that in class, he was a clown, although I blamed myself for being too competitive and transferring my anxiety down the leash. She said that chilling was a lesson all handlers had to learn and that at least I had managed the first step -- blaming myself instead of the dog.

We went through the course with Parker paying just about no attention on me. There were other dogs all around the edges of the course practicing and he was on high alert for anything that might go wrong, but the instructor was full of praise for us. Obviously my standards are way too high.

And the second time through (we skipped several signs, in order to concentrate on the ones we “knew”), the instructor told me that we had done a stellar job and were making good progress.

W00t!