My lovely friend Geordie is going home tomorrow. His leash manners have improved exponentially with his pinch collar and his commands Down, Sit, Come, Placemat, and his Implied Stay are all pretty reliable when he has his leash on (Placemat doesn't need a leash anymore but sometimes it's nice to have him wearing his prong collar just in case he gets itching to sneak off but he's done it just fine without his training collar in a low/moderate distraction level time of day). 
Where he still toils the most is with Down. On grass or other comfy surface he is pretty quick to lay down without a correction. He is a bit of a snob about my gravel driveway and sometimes needs a correction to get him to lay down if the rocks feel pokey. But once he realizes that you mean it he lays down just fine. 
What I will want to cover in Follow Up lessons is getting his Come command to be better off-leash, which is not covered in the one-week package and making sure he keeps his Implied Stay since he does tend to feel left out and can get sneaky. I am guessing he will need his pinch collar for a few months after he goes home (for walks) and then we can discuss graduating him to a martingale or similar collar once his obedient lifestyle has become routine. 
I have enjoyed this happy fellow. He has been a good buddy and a fun dog to work with. But he is also enterprising, determined, and a bit of a brat when he wants to be so I want his people to have high expectations of him and even if he pretends to not know what to do (he is a gigantic liar) to insist that he get the job done. He knows his words pretty well but if he doesn't HAVE to work he would sometimes prefer to do his own Geordie things.

Geordie handled the weather today with his usual happy-go-lucky enthusiasm. Turns out he is just as happy to work around the house as he is to work outside which worked out well because it rained pretty well all day. We did some Placemat, some Down/Stay, and some come Come commands throughout the day and we did a quick walk around the garden just to get some energy spent. He is getting better with his commands. He is very responsive when he has his prong collar on and so/so when he doesn't so around the house I've been using a training tab (tiny leash) to allow me to correct him if he is being a pest. But he has so far been pretty polite in the house other than being a bit too much of a buffalo when the kids have a project going that is easily knocked over (solution is for Noah to build his legos in his room but he doesn't believe me). 
Tomorrow the weather should cooperate and so he will get to spend more time outside which I am sure he will enjoy. All in all he is doing great.

Okay so Geordie is hilarious. He is the labbiest lab ever and he has been cracking me up all day. However, being a labby lab also means that he has almost no impulse control and very little self restraint. He is a smart boy but he usually just lets his enthusiasm take the driver's seat. So my task this week is to help him learn to restrain himself and to listen to his handler.
We started with Heel/Autosit, Implied Stay, and Down today. At first he tried to use his pinch collar like an ox yolk (like he does his flat collar) and when that didn't work he decided bouncing was the next best option. But within 10 minutes he was walking like a dog and was even sitting automatically when I stopped now and then. His Down was fairly easy to introduce and more difficult to keep once he got distracted. He lays down pretty well but then he wants to boing right back up and go do Geordie things. So we are going to work (probably daily) on his staying power around distractions. Luckily he finds chickens VERY distracting so he is gonna be my helper and lay down while I take care of the chickens daily. Don't worry, I am very good at keeping my chickens safe while I work the dogs.
So far he is settling in just fine. He didn't want his breakfast but he ate his dinner with gusto. He is relaxing in his crate while I put the babies to bed and then we will get one last potty walk before it's his official bed time.
​I'm looking forward to working with this goof this week. He is going to be a light hearted guy, I can tell.

Keeping things short today because our internet is blinking out a little and I keep losing my posts.
Graciepants did well today. She did get a bit of an easy day because my day was booked solid with lessons and consults but the couple workouts we got to went fine. She is still not always super confident that she is doing things right and so she needs some encouragement but she tries hard and enjoys working and she is a love sponge so praise is her bread and butter.
I am afraid that with the weather we probably won't get a chance to go downtown so I will want to prioritize that in follow up lessons. TOmorrow we are taking her glamour shot for the website and taking her go-home video to show her folks during her pick up lesson so they can see that she learned stuff while she was here. She is going to be PUMPED to see them again and so the video helps showcase what we want it to look like when she is calm just incase she is a screwball during the lesson.
Right now she is chewing on Ace's head and trying to tease him into playing with her, it's working so long as he doesn't have to get up from his bed to play. He had a long day of consultations and so is trying to relax with a puppy on his back.

Every day Gracie keeps getting better. Her recall has improved a ton and so she is coming on command about 85% of the time with no correction. We did her workouts off-leash today with Ace (her friend) out playing in the same area and she did pretty well working around him without breaking command to go join him. She still occasionally will backtalk or blow off commands but she corrects back to task pretty easily. She is a playful and argumentative dog who still tries to tease me into playing with her instead of working but if she understands that you mean business she shapes up nicely. A sense of humor is a must for dogs like Grace because she is so coy and she really enjoys teasing people.
Tomorrow we are moving on to "proofing stage". She knows all the commands I am going to teach her and now we are increasing distractions and asking her to work in more taxing environments. I hope the weather cooperates this weekend because I really want to take her for a walk downtown to make sure all this training translates to a more urban environment. But if it's too cruddy out we will cover that in follow ups. For now she is pestering Ace into playing with her for a while longer before bed time. Their little friendship is pretty darling.

Grace is coming along just fine. Her obedience is great on-leash and off-leash with her remote it is good about 75% of the time. She gets a little sloppy and if she makes a mistake she sometimes tries to "cute" her way out of working and tries to tease me into playing instead. She gets pouty when it doesn't work but then she shapes up and shows me that she does understand what I was asking her to do. She is a lovely and spirited girl who likes to put her own spin on things. 
She is still toiling with Come. She knows the word and will come to a certain extent but she always assumes that if she comes to me then it means fun is over and we are either going inside or we are going to go back to work so I invented a game that I've called "catch and release" where I call her to me and once she sits in front of me I throw her a little party and then I let her go play for about 30-45 seconds and then I call her again and she is starting to get excited about coming and sitting to get her praise. Tomorrow I may tone it down a little (so her owner doesn't have to throw a party every time the dog comes to her) but dedicate a workout or two just to coming without a leash on when she isn't in another command. It's easy for her to come when I've left her in a sit/stay. There isn't anything better to do. But when she is off doing Gracie things and having Gracie thoughts she likes to blow that command off. So I'm focusing on getting her to come reliably even when there is something "better to do."
Gracie has been cracking me up all week. She is a challenge but not because she has a sour demeanor. She is a ton of fun and loves to be the center of attention. If you ask her every day is the Gracie Show. But as much as I enjoy her I am making sure to keep my standards very high. She is a dog who can scare people just because of her breed and so we need to make sure she is under control and that she has a good vocabulary with her owner so that she stays as safe as possible while enjoying the freedom that a remote collar allows in Lawrence.

Grace is a beautiful young Doberman girl who is here for a week of basic training. She is a happy, boisterous, kid who wants to please but who has a comically small amount of impulse control. Self-restraint is the phrase of the day here as we lay the foundation of training for Grace. 
Today we did the very basics, Heel/Autosit (which she is already a rock star at because her mom has worked with her on it already), Down, Implied Stay and Come. She eventually got all of these commands right at least twice in a row today but the Come command was the toughie. She took a LOT of encouragement before she would come when called and sit nicely in front of me. She wasn't shy or unwilling. She was simply too BUSY to stop what she was doing to come when called. She would even frantically look for something else to do when I called her so that she wouldn't have to come. Her remote collar was instrumental in teaching her that I can actually bug her wherever she goes so she may as well come and get butt scratches the first time I ask her to. By the end of the day she was understanding the game and she was coming much more regularly.
She stayed on a long tether today but as her recall improves I plan to give her some play time off-leash just using her remote. So far she has been a fun (and sassy) student and a polite house guest once she stops throwing the Gracie party. Ace adores her.