Jack is my most outgoing and friendly dog....a bit too friendly actually. Since I've gotten him (he was 3 months) I have taken him to new surroundings and tried to socialize him with as many dogs as possible. We still go to the pet store every weekend where he gets to meet new people and dogs. He used to bark at other dogs and I worked hard to get him to stop that, then he would bark at men, we worked on that. I taught him "quiet" and has been doing great with the whole barking thing.
A new problem has come about. He will heel beautifully in the house and hard and pays attention really well. So I moved out to the sidewalk in front of the house, great still. Okay, so he does great with no distractions. My problem is getting him to pay attention when there are distractions, even with little distractions present (a bird on the other side of the street on the ground...or an ant on the sidewalk...okay maybe not but you get the point) he will totally blow me off and not pay any attention. Even if I have treats he acts like I don't exsist. When we are walking down the sidewalk and a dog barks at us from its backyard Jack goes nutso and he thankfully doesn't bark anymore but pulls like crazy and I literally drag him past. There are some houses that he is worse at then others but for the most part he is horrible!! I want him to stop this behavior and I would like him to be focused on what I am trying to tell him and pay attention!! As you may know I plan on doing agility with him. I can't have a dog crazy dog in agility! I am hoping some formal obediance will help this, I am currently checking out a few local places because I want to get his CGC before we start agility next summer and I think that being in a class with distractions will help a lot more. But what should I do? I do have a halti for him but he absolutley hates it but I think it could help in this situation...I am open to suggestions
Thanks,
The crazy rotten black dog
UPDATE....(DEC 2nd)
Well Jack has been in Obedience class for 4 weeks now. At the first class he was AWFUL, he was barking, really stressed and making all sorts of Jack-like noises (exessive moaning, "arfing" like a seal...etc.) But after 4 weeks he is at the top of his class!! I really didn't think it would be so beneficial. I did teach him the watch command as you two (Erica and Dixieland Dancer) suggested and it is AMAZING!! We have gotten to the point that whenever I tell him to watch me he looks right away...even with distractions, I love it!! The club that we are doing obedience with also does CGC testing and I would love to do it this month. There is one Dec. 9 but I think its a bit too soon, we'll see. I'm sorry, I doubt that anybody cares, lol but I am just sooo proud of Jack! They also have been pulling out a few agility obstacles each class, I can not wait to start agility with this boy! He tends to get bored with the obedience and always doing the same thing over and over but once he sees the equipment coming out he gets soo wound up!! He was the only one to fearlessly jump through the tire or go through the tunnel (he has never done either of these things and acted like hes done it before!) Oh man, I'm excited, can you tell? lol...Okay, thats my uppydate on the "Crazy Rotten Black dog". Oh, he is much much better with some of the houses he was terrible at before, thanks to the watch command he is progressing so much. We still have a long way to go but I think we're off to a good start
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