I hate it when I am unable to post the blog on a dog's first day but Stuart is settling in fine. He was a little growly at first with the other dogs but after the initial sniff they've all gotten along fine, even with tiny Chewie. 
He has been introduced to most of his commands. His loose leash walking is getting better with each walk.
He toils with Down mostly out of stubbornness. He is a large strong dog and so he has gotten used to either throwing his weight around a little to control the walk or to ignore commands because he can just sit there like a fluffly boulder. A properly fitting pinch collar has helped me to communicate with him and by helping me be more convincing in my commands I have more opportunity to praise him. 
He is very calm in the house and enjoys napping next to the door. In his kennel he and his roommate talk too much but other than that he is a perfect gentleman. 
He is doing just fine for day 2. We will introduce the rest of his commands tomorrow and start making things a little harder as we go along. 

Sweet Daisy has now been introduced to all of her commands except for Placemat. Her leash walking has done a complete 180 and she is auto-sitting regularly. Her Down command is one of the silliest I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. She tips herself backwards from the sit and stretches luxuriously on her back and waits for her belly rub. She cracks me up every time.
In the house she has actually been really polite. This is surprising only because of her energy level when outdoors but she is pretty quiet in the house. Other than inviting herself into all of the laps and accidentally knocking the baby over once she has been a peach.
In her kennel she barks too much but so does her roommate so no one is losing sleep. I am very happy with her progress so far.

Cute little Daisy is such a sweet wigglebutt. She is here for a week of on-leash obedience and I am looking forward to teaching her. We started working on Heel, Sit and Down this afternoon and will continue to work on these and more tomorrow.
She is already good buds with Ace and she likes the kitty quite a bit! Right now she is snoozing in her kennel waiting for her last chance potty. 
More on this sweet Boxer mix tomorrow!

We are trying this again. The weather is interfering with my internet connection so hopefully this third attempt will post.

Sadie is doing great. Her Heel/Autosit is getting pretty good. She is autositting most of the time now and she is walking better with each walk. She needs minimal corrections for pulling and moderate correction for jumping up.

She is a very excitable pooch and so calm praise works best for her. When it comes to her jumping up and excited peeing I think the big ticket here will be getting her more exercise. We went on a little run today and she did quite well. I hope that by getting her better manners on the leash her owners can get some more exercise for this very active girl.

I am very pleased with where she got today. I am looking forward to where we will get tomorrow.

We are trying this again. The weather is interfering with my internet connection so hopefully this third attempt will post.

Sadie is doing great. Her Heel/Autosit is getting pretty good. She is autositting most of the time now and she is walking better with each walk. She needs minimal corrections for pulling and moderate correction for jumping up.

She is a very excitable pooch and so calm praise works best for her. When it comes to her jumping up and excited peeing I think the big ticket here will be getting her more exercise. We went on a little run today and she did quite well. I hope that by getting her better manners on the leash her owners can get some more exercise for this very active girl.

I am very pleased with where she got today. I am looking forward to where we will get tomorrow.

Sadie is here for a few days of leash training. Her leash manners are pretty impressive in a not so good way. She is quite a back-talker and will manipulate her way to doing what she wants if she can get away with it. But she is sweet natured and willing to please (and did I mention funny?) so I do think we can make quick progress with her.
Today we went on two walks and while the first one was pretty bad the second one already showed improvement. The first walk saw a lot of bucking, jumping up, trying to play with the leash, pulling forward and then refusing to move but by the end she was walking somewhat politely after I stalwartly refused to do anything but walk with her. You could almost hear her say "HMPH!" 
The second walk was a few hours later and she was a bit more polite. Still some bucking and some pouting but she walked like a lady for a good portion of the walk and she only tried to play with the leash once. Her automatic Sit is not at all automatic yet. That is tomorrow's project.
I am excited to help Sadie and hopefully we will make lots of progress over the next few days and make walking her a more enjoyable experience for all involved. Welcome, Sadie!

Wow, a few days of rain (and thus our internet wasn't great) and a Sunday and suddenly it has been 3 days since a blog post!
Ziva is doing great. We are getting ready to send her home and I am very pleased with her progress. She knows her commands and her off leash control is great. She enjoys the freedom of her collar and when she wanders off to play or root around she responds immediately when asked to return. She also has gotten very good with "leave it" when she sticks her nose in something that she shouldn't or when she is chasing the cat. 
Her Placemat is getting better but this is where she toils the most. She will stay once you've parked her but there is typically a little argument before she gets there. she really wants to be by your feet or even better, on the couch next to you. Like I said, once she is settled on her mat she stays pretty well and her record is 2 hours while I came and went with the laundry and while the other dogs bustled around. 
I will miss this sweetie but she is ready to be back in her home with her people. I know they will be proud of how far she has come.

Ziva had some good workouts today and I am pleased with where she is in her training. She still needs work on her Down from the Front, her off-leash Heel (once she gets praised she assumes she is done but she did better today than she did yesterday so progress is being made). And she really toiled with Placemat today. She was able to stay on it for about 30 minutes but she was very focussed on the baby and would get up if he moved around the room. Noah really liked her so we had a mutual attraction distraction and they did become good buddies, even if it was at the expense of her Placemat practice time. We have plenty of time to work on this so I am not concerned but she needs a bit more practice around distractions. 
Tomorrow I plan to give her some more workouts working mostly on Heel since her Implied Stay is good and her Downs are getting there. She sticks around when she is not in a Heel and she is slowly getting to the point that she understands that even if she isn't wearing a leash the rules behind Heel still remain the same. I think tomorrow will be the turning point for her because I have some extra time (rare for a Saturday) to take her on a long walk and really work that Heel for an extended amount of time. 

Zeus had a good day today. His first workout was absolutely stellar. He only needed one correction when he laid down and started eating a dandelion instead of Heeling. He is coming along on his commands and especially after he gets into working mode (maybe a minute or two into the workout) he really does quite well. It is getting him focused and into working that is the real job at this point.
Zeus is very silly with Place and he pushes it for sure but in the end he did stay on his mat (after a fashion, he fell asleep and fell off of it about 45 minutes in and I let him sleep instead of waking him up) for about an hour and 10 minutes today. He did better once I have him something to do while he was on his bed. I gave him a nylabone and it kept him happy until he fell asleep. 
His afternoon workout (he only got one today as I had appointments take me into town this afternoon) went pretty well as well. He got mixed up a few times with Down and Sit but he wasn't back talking as much as he has in the past. All in all, I think Zeus is trying hard and it will come down to his age and practice time. He is doing great considering he has the attention span of a bee. 
I will say, for a gigantic, uncoordinated, puppy Zeus has been very charming in the house. I thought he was going to be a bull in a china shop but unless Ace gets him hyper he really has been polite in the house. Good boy, Zeus.

Today was a good day for Zeus. It started out actually not that great. He had a very difficult workout and he was doing a lot of manipulation trying to get out of work. He mostly tries to use his sheer size. He will flop over or try to just trot away to avoid working. I ended up putting him back on the long leash for the morning and also using the Continuous mode on his collar to get him back into shape. The Continuous mode is different from the Nick mode in that for as long as you hold the button down he will feel stimulation, unlike the Nick which just delivers a quick shock. Tapping the continuous button (not holding it down for more than a second) seemed to be a different enough sensation to get him to shape up a little and it kept him from trying to bolt anymore.
I was expecting another difficult workout this afternoon but he actually gave me a perfect training session. I think I may have had to buzz him once with the pager but other than that he was an absolute prince. I was very pleased with him. Of course, now that he has done it perfectly I know we can expect him to do it perfectly and so we will have high expectations of him from now on. He is a good boy and he knows what we want from him, and he showed me today that he can rise to my standards. The trick now is to keep him up. I plan to do Placemat tomorrow and I am hoping to get him into town for a field trip. If I don't get him in tomorrow it will have to wait until Sunday and that is cutting it a little close to troubleshoot anything that comes up down town. But today was a definite win. Go, Zeus, Go!

I wish I could have gotten a video of Ziva's first bit of freedom with her new remote trainer. For 3 days she had not had the opportunity to really run and this girl is fast. I put her collar on her and we practiced the Come command a few times on the long leash and then the leash came off and she jubilantly bounded around the yard. Then we had a long play session with Zeus and Ace. 
All of her commands are fairly reliable off-leash except for Heel. She seems confused about whether or not she needs to stay right on my left or if she can float around. This just needs a little cleaning up. Her Down from the front command also needs some fine tuning because she tends to end up on my feet instead of where I parked her.
Tomorrow we are going to practice more with her remote collar and we are going to do some Placemat. But so far the remote collar has been very successful for her. Her recall has been very reliable so far, even when she was chasing the kitty for a second. Good girl, Ziva!