Tonight was Mason’s second class. I called awhile beforehand to make sure that it was still on since the weather and the roads were getting bad. It was, so Eric let me drive the truck and I headed out a little early. The roads were indeed slippery.

We got there to find a full parking lot, there was something going on in the regular office part. Walked into the training room part and I’m the only one in there. While I was talking to the instructor she got two phone calls from people not coming. Finally, 15 minutes late, one other person showed up.

So, we got a LOT of one-on-one training, which was absolutely terrific. Mason is doing SO good!! It seriously makes my day every time we go there and he is so enthusiastic and he tries so hard. We had a little bit of a rough start though. He didn’t get dinner tonight before class and was a little over-eager to chomp on my fingers. We had to take a time-out and work on taking the treat gently and then start up again.

We worked mainly on heeling and sitting in the proper position. The proper position is right next to my leg and straight with my body. He has a tendency for his rear-end to swing out and then to sit perpendicular to me, like an “L”. This wouldn’t normally be a problem but our instructor thinks that, with time and patience, Mason would excel at Rally!! Which is pretty freaking awesome! She said judges like to see happiness, enthusiasm, quick responses and proper positioning. He’s got all of those but the proper positioning so we practiced that a lot.

At this point, I have to say that he is walking better on a leash in some aspects, than Midas. He looks at me WAY more often and is a lot more observant of turns and where I’m going. But, he’s very motivated by treats so I’m waiting to see what will happen when I start weaning him off. The instructor thinks that he’s borderline being too treat-motivated but not quite there so that’s workable. I’m having such a great time working with my cute little dude!

Since no one else came to class, this was like a bonus for us. She is adding another week on for everyone so we get to have one extra class!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 8:35 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.