Tonight was Mason’s first obedience class. We decided to go through the Kent County Humane Society because it was cheaper and closer and hopefully just as beneficial. I am really looking forward to having this class with him. I’ve learned (and I’m still regretting) the mistakes of not properly socializing/training Midas from the beginning and I’m hoping to rectify this with Mason. He has some rough spots. Mainly, I can’t for the life of me figure out a way to get the pup to lay down without rolling over. But, overall he’s soooo eager to please that you can’t help but smile at his extremely enthusiastic responses.

When we walked in the door he was straining at his leash so badly he was gagging (similar to Midas unfortunately). I picked a quiet corner to sit down in so he could watch the action but we wouldn’t be infringing on other owners’ space.

This is a join-when-you-pay-and-are-available class. So, all the dogs in our class are at various levels of the program. This was our first week but for someone across the room, it was their last. This means that everyone is working on different things and at separate times. On one hand I feel like it’s more hectic and we don’t get as much one-on-one as we should. On the other though, I think it’s good to work with Mason with so many distractions.

Every single dog in the class had a head halter or a harness on their dogs. We were the only ones with just a plain flat buckle collar. I am content to stay with that though. Our week one tasks are to fill out the paperwork on what our goals are, work on laying down (even though that’s week two homework) and work on him focusing on our faces no matter what tasty tidbit we have in our hands. He is excelling at the focusing, or “look” command (as I taught Midas). We saw several people attempting the sit/stay and decided to give that a whirl with all the distractions - he was so excited to come on the release command that he “spun out” on the slick floor. Other people were laughing at us. The teacher called him “exuberant” . Laying down needs some serious work but she showed us a technique to hopefully help…I’ll tell all about it later if we can get it to work .

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 11:32 am 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.