Training week 3, countdown to graduation

Saturday was class 3 of 4. Next meeting is graduation (ha, ha, ha). Sandy and I have been working on sit/stay and down stay and she does pretty well in the backyard where I seem to have her attention and okay in the house but she can get distracted or hyper and go off. This week during class it was very warm. Diego and Sandy are both black haired and it was getting to them. We started with recall work. The idea is you give the dog a lot of treats and praise for paying attention to you and after a few intervals of that, get them to come to you and sit for treats. Sandy just didn't want to pay attention to me. She was interested in the Fedex truck, Brinkley and a number of other things, but wasn't interested in taking treats from me. Perhaps at home I can get a better response. Dana also said that we can move to more "high valued" treats to see if that helps. Perhaps some chicken bits.

This week we also started working on leash walking. I thought to myself, leash walking, good grief, that's just another name for "try to pull me down the sidewalk". Fortunately, we don't have to do the same walk to the mailbox. We only have to walk in circles getting the dogs attention to come walk with us. We started by going into the store to let the dogs cool down and to try to find a sound that will get the dogs attention. Other people were making a clicking sound with their tongues, but I don't seem to be able to. I had already been doing a short whistle at times with Sandy, so that is the one that I worked. When she wasn't paying me attention, a short whistle and then a treat/praise when she responded to the sound by coming over to me. We took this outside and started doing it with walking. When the dog got to the end of her leash ahead of me, I whistled and when she turned to pay attention, we changed directions so that she ended up by my side (and then passed me). After a few times, it seemed like she was walking more beside me, but that could just be the heat.

Sandy spent the weekend at the shelter so she could get more exposure. When I pick her up tonight,I will start working on this weeks homework.

Dana also mentioned that when she looked at Sandy, she thinks she looks a bit like an Australian Kelpie. I "googled" Kelpie and looked at some pictures. Ben says he sees it,but I am not sure. There are definitely Kelpies with the same coloring as Sandy, but I am not sure on the rest. She is definitely a mix of something and I guess Kelpie is a possibility. Who's to say.