Our last couple Obedience classes have been cancelled. One due to rain and the other due to extreme heat and humidity. Unfortunately, the solution to missing these two classes is to add 15-20 minutes onto the end of the last couple. Which doesn’t give us back all the time we lost and personally I really don’t care for it at all. That being said, on to the lesson.

Midas did really, really well today. We’ve been practicing the “look” command where he then has to move his focus from my hand (with the treat) to my face to get the treat. He hardly whined at all today. Actually I think perhaps his whining is becoming more water-dependent. He was fine until the last 15 minutes of class we moved over to where he could see other dogs swimming in a little pond and then it started. It might also be because he was tired of class. He did well in all of the little tests that we had to go through tonight. This included: weaving through cones (practicing left and right turns), weaving through a crowd, walking past a dog/dogs (several times), sit/stay and come, a visitor meeting me and a visitor petting him. We’ve been working hard about not going potty on the leash unless I tell him he can and that went decently well too, only a couple of slip-ups.

One thing that did change is that he started to almost demand a treat. I learned in my psychology class that it is more reinforcing to treat on a sporadic schedule because it keeps the subject hoping for more. Well, Midas decided a couple of times he deserved a treat and either tried to treat himself (out of my hip bag) or started to “wuff” (a voiceless bark). I didn’t take him out for any walks (or any The Catch training either) because of his foot. You can read that story here.

This week’s goals: practice The Catch (with his new Water Wubba ), practice loose leash walking without the prong collar, practice walking past houses with dogs on loose leash, practice not marking everything in site…I hope that’s all for now. I’m really nervous about the test (which is the last day of class, so definitely won’t be making time up on that day either ).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Non-Competitive Obedience, Training Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.