Oz's First Night of Basic Obedience
We pulled into the training facility parking lot and I hadn't even
gotten the car into park, before Oz started growling at a Cat
wandering the lot. First time he's ever growled at anything. I
think Murph must be instructing him in how to be a good terrier,
when I'm not around.
I had to sign in and write a check for the class and Oz was doing
pretty good just standing there. Then all of a sudden he just
about yanked my arm out of the socket pulling on the leash. I
looked back to see that a man came up behind me and was
letting his dog run right up to Oz enticing him to play. Does the
man do the polite thing and pull his dog back, since he can see
I'm struggling to try and write a check with one hand and control
Oz with the other? Uh no... I even tried putting my body between
Oz and his dog, but that only added to the problem, because
then I had to try and write the check, while trying to keep my
balance with a dog darting between my legs. The first thing
the trainer mentioned when she started class was Not to let
your dog interact with the other dogs. Hope this guy was
listening.
The other dogs in the class are 4 Rotties, Yorkie, Shiba Inu Mix,
Pointer, Lab and Springer Spaniel. The Shiba Inu Mix was the
best one, but I don't think I saw his tail wag once. I think he
was more into pleasing his owner, than really being happy to
be there. I love that Oz's tail wags the whole time we're
training. That's how Murph was in Basic too. He even got voted
Happiest Dog.
First command we did was "Easy", to take the treat nicely from
your hand. With Murph and Maddie around, Oz doesn't do this
so great at home, but guess he knows I won't give any of his
treats away to the other dogs in class, so he did this real good.
We then did "Heel", "Sit" and "Come". He wanted to be a lil'
ahead of me in "Heel", so we'll have to work on that this week,
but overall he did real good on all 3 of those. Actually he did
great throughout the class as long as we were doing something.
It was when we were standing around getting instruction for
the next command that we had problems. Everybody else's
dog was more or less laying down or sitting calmly next to their
owner (well except for the springer spaniel, who was barking).
They didn't seem all that animated to be there. Oz however was
wagging his tail and looking all around him and if we stayed in
one place too long would whine. Not a real loud obnoxious
whine, but just loud enough to get across his point that he was
ready to do something... Anything... Somebody throw a ball for
me to fetch or give me some sheep to herd, but this standing
around doing nothing is for a pekinese, not a Collie.
Next comannd was "Settle" and guess who the trainer asked
to use for her example?. Amazingly he did pretty good. She
said "Settle", put her foot on his leash, then ignored him. He
laid down quietly beside her, within about 30 seconds. So we're
definitely gonna work on that this week. That's gonna be a
good command for him to know.
She also looked at Oz, when she talked about the "Quiet"
command, but used the Springer Spaniel in her example of
what to do. So at least we weren't the most obnoxious dog,
noise wise.
I think things went pretty well for our first night. He's a real
good boy as long as you keep his mind occupied.
Par...
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