Jasmine's first day of school

I was a little nervous about Jasmine going to class with me today. She's not mean to other dogs but she gets pretty nervous about other dogs. She was the first dog there so she got to wander the room and sniff everything she wanted to until another dog got there. By then, she had settled in by laying next to my feet.

The class is full of puppies which means exubrant energy. That makes Jasmine super defensive. We were sitting next to a beautiful Siberian Husky that was full of that energy and also has a mild case of dog aggression. At first, Jasmine growled at him but after a few minutes, she relaxed and even though he barked at her a number of times, she didn't care.

She already knows the commands they were teaching (sit, down, stay) so I had her practice a few times but then we would work on other things to keep her attention. Actully, we did a lot of focus practicing. She's great at that at home but with other dogs around, she really was having a much harder time.

Then we worked on loose leash walking. Now that's always something Jasmine needs to practice on. She fought it every time we passed the doors... she really just wanted to leave. But then we would get past the doors and she would do well again. Then we walked back and forth across the room. We ended up in all positions next to many of the other dogs and Jasmine really reacted well, not growling once. Then, the husky got into it with one of the other dogs...not biting the dog, just some jumping and dominating.

As I was helping put the chairs away, I had Jasmine in a sit-stay. She did really well and didn't move until I released her. She did really well and I was happy. She was just happy to finally walk out the door.

Wearing my school uniform

I finally started my externship for my dog training schooling. I went to the Humane Soociety last night and met Robyn, my mentor for the next little while (at least 12 weeks). I am attending 6 week class with Jasmine, training her. Then I will attend another one of her 6 week classes where I will do some teaching myself. I will also start doing my volunteer training hours at the Humane Society shortly. My uniform is just a polo shirt that has the school's logo and displays that I am a student.

The class is fairly large, between 10-12 dogs. The smallest dog is a dauschund puppy and the largest is an almost full grown (but still a puppy) Akita mix weighing about twice as much as Jasmine. There is one dog in there that is reported to be dog aggressive but he was playing with other dogs after class with no problems. I wish I had taken Bear to one of these classes as a puppy just for the purpose of being able to introduce him to other dogs so he maybe wouldn't have developed a hate/fear of other dogs of course everything else I would have learned from classes would have been good too.

After class, I asked Robyn how to get Bear to learn the focus cue. I have been able to teach Jasmine and Jack but Bear just refuses to look at my face when I try. She told me to put my face just in front of his so he doesn't have far to look...as soon as he makes eye contact, give him a treat. It actually worked. It doesn't work every time but it is progress!

Since I had the treats out, I decided to try to teach Jasmine a game. I put a treat in one hand, closed both hands and let her sniff both fists. Then, she paws the one with the treat in it. She picked it up really easily except she doesn't always do the sniffing part. She just paws one hand and I open it. If there's no treat in it, she paws the other. It's funny but she hasn't quite gotten it down yet. I tried it with Jack too but he really had no idea what I was trying to get him to do. So after watching Jasmine do it, he started shaking hands with me intently. His dew claws really dig in! He never got it so I moved on to something he already knew.

Proud Mama

Jack has been making some really big improvements since we moved here. He is our most fearful dog. When we got him, he was afraid of men, children, other dogs, loud noises, car rides, leashes, collars, shoes...if I thought hard enough, I could probably think of other things as well but that's good enough. Some of those problems have disappeared, others, he's still working on. The thing he's really improved on recently is with other dogs.

Not too long before moving here (before the accident) I was on our daily walk. I walked all three dogs together out there because we almost never ran into anyone on the road we used and since I only had to do one walk, they were able to get a longer walk. A woman walked by walking a dog. The dogs went crazy and Jack, who was wearing a head collar too big for him managed to get out of the collar. He ran straight for the woman's dog and latched onto one of his legs. The woman was screaming and trying to pick up her dog. I'm surprised she didn't really kick Jack good. Jack let go and ran back to me. I almost grabbed his regular collar but he ran back toward the dog. This time, he just circled it barking like crazy. I'm sure the woman thought I was a jerk letting Jack torment her and her dog like that but if I got close enough to get Jack, then Bear would be close enough to get in on the action so I had to wait until Jack came to me. It was a pretty helpless feeling for me and I wasn't even the one being attacked! Once I got ahold of Jack, I asked her if she and her dog were ok. She said they were fine and the dog wasn't limping when they walked away.

But now you'll still see Jack, and the other two, barking at any dog that goes by the yard but once Jack gets out of the yard and starts walking, he almost couldn't care less about the dogs he sees. He will look at them as we walk by but there's no pulling, charging or barking...there is some freezing though sometimes. I give him a minute to freeze in place then I'll grab his attention and he usually doesn't have a problem moving on at that point. We walked past a house where there was a dog in the driveway with no person around. Jack saw him and stopped. The dog stood up and started walking toward us. It only walked a couple of steps before stopping. Jack just kept his eyes on him but sat down. He never barked or growled. The other dog lost interest and walked away to the back yard. Jack watched him walk away then got up and continued walking with me. The walks are so much more calm now and I'm so proud of the progress he's making.

Teaching Jack to roll over

I decided that it was time to tech Jack a new trick. I never would have guessed that he was so trainable but he is the one most willing to learn new things. His all time favorite is still shaking hands. I laughed hysterically when he caught onto that one. He still makes me laugh and he's so good!

I brought out the treats and put Jack in a down, then lured his head to the side and pulled the treat away so that he had to roll over to get the treat which he did. We worked on it for only a few minutes and he did it over and over again. We did one other session for about 2 minutes but he still needs the lure, he hasn't connected the action to the cue yet but he's doing pretty well.

I tried it with Jasmine and it scared her so she ran away and stayed in her kennel for a couple of hours...she's so wimpy. Even though she doesn't like her feet being touched, she will shake hands and let me grasp it for a second...she even offered her other paw when I asked for it the other day. SHe's making progress.

Of course, there's no way Bear would roll over so I didn't even try it with him. Instead, I tried working with him on shaking hands. He doesn't like to do it and when he does, it's pretty pathetic. He doesn't bring his paw up and out to meet mine, he lightly lifts it off the ground and that's it. But I have noticed him doing it sometimes when he wants something that I won't give him...trying to appease me, I suppose.