Who remembers Scout the golden doodle? Well sailor is her litter mate who is here for a week of basic obedience. Sailor is a charming girl with a sweet personality. Today we learned heel/Autosit, Down, Implied Stay and Come. She isn’t perfect with anything yet but hey, it’s day one. But she shows a ton of promise. She has fun with work and she keeps focus well.
She has also made friends with the other dogs and gets along with everyone well. She stayed in Place for an hour today while I worked at my computer. She so far has been a happy worker and she adores praise. We need to work on her self restraint but she will get there I’m sure. She is still such a puppy! This will be a fun week!

Betty is doing great. We are mostly in the proofing stage where we have taught her everything and are working on distractions and boy is this girl distractible. Keeping her focused is almost impossible but regaining her focus when. We lose it is getting much easier. She notices EVERYTHING but her attention span should improve with time. For only being day 4 she is doing a great job. However she also decided to throw me a curve ball today when she was feeling pouty and didn’t want to work she did something that I call “dropping anchor” where she flops to the ground and goes deadweight to see if I will leave her alone. Of course I don’t and so it didn’t last long but it was silly that she tried that today.
Her Placemat is another thing she will drop anchor about. Once she is on it she is pretty well parked but betting her to put two feet on it is sometimes a battle. I’m going to see if I can’t clean this up tomorrow so she quits putting the brakes on when we walk up to her mat. She just thinks it’s boring but she should still walk into her mat with some semblance of dignity.
Almost done, Betty! She is working hard.

Betty is coming right along. She is bright and playful and enjoying learning. She likes to try to tease her handler into playing instead of working and she still gets distracted by other animals but also it’s only day two. It’s already getting easier to refocus her after she gets distracted but I can tell that this is something we will want to keep an eye on for her follow-up lessons.
She has been sweet in the house. Still too active for Dana’s liking but Betty and Ace have a lot of fun. More work tomorrow!

Betty is a classic sweet doggy dog. Most of her misbehavior is the product of a good nature and a LOT of energy. She has already made great friends with Ace. They are similar breeds and so they play similarly. They will have a lot of fun this week!
Betty is here for a week of basic obedience training. She will learn Heel/Autosit, Down, Stay, Come and Placemat. Today we introduced loose leash walking, Heel/Autosit and started her Implied Stay. She did well. The horses were very distracting but working around distractions are one of her working points this week so we’ll consider that just tossing her into the deep end.
I like Betty. She is a fun personality and happy to work. I think this will be a fun little partnership this week.

Keeping the blog short tonight because I’ve been struggling to stay logged on to the internet.
​Keisha is doing great. She is reliable in all of her commands but she toils a little bit with Down from the Front (where the handler is situated in front of the dog at the end of the leash). We are working on her not crawling or squirming forward and instead laying down where she is parked.
She is such a goofy girl and every day she has me laughing.

Kiesha is such a quick study. She enjoys work even though her sense of humor gets her into trouble sometimes. She likes to try to tease her handler into playing or she will be overly dramatic about her commands (instead of laying down with dignity she will dramatically flop over and really sell it). We’ve taken to calling her workouts the Keisha Show.
She has been introduced to every command she will learn this week and now we are fine tuning, proofing, and cleaning them up to make sure she is as solid as can be. For a dog her age she has a great work ethic and she has such a cute personality working with her is really enjoyable.
Today she had a blast playing with all the other dogs. She is a very neutral dog and she has no interest in power struggles and puppy politics so she gets on well with everyone. Even Dana, who we nicknamed the Fun Police because she likes to stop games that are getting too rough, enjoys her company.

Stella The Great goes home tomorrow. Her short stay here has been fruitful I think. Her Placemat command in the house is very solid. Her leash manners have improved tenfold and her off-leash “radius training” and her Here command are getting more reliable every work out. She is a fun dog and if her owners ever want her to get more obedience training she is a good candidate for it.
We also learned today that when she is determined enough she can jump out of the 6’ tall kennel stall she has been in. So that was certainly a surprise. She is the second dog in 9 years who has been able to hop over their kennel wall.
She has been a blast to work with and I hope to see her again in follow ups soon!

Keisha is a striking young Briard girl here for a week of obedience training. She has a lovely temperament but she is large and strong and impulsive. Today we started Heel/Autosit, Implied Stay, Come and Down. She did very well improving her leash manners. Her Automatic Sit confuses her but she will begrudgingly do it. Her Implied Stay impressed me. She caught on to that right away. Down is another one of those things she will do but she would rather not.
She is a fast learner which isn’t surprising for a herding dog. I imagine she will catch on fast and then start getting little goofy as she gets more comfortable. She has been polite and curious in the house and she enjoys the other dogs. This should be a fun week with a rare breed!

You can’t go wrong with a gun dog and this little shorthaired pointer proves just that. She is a spirited little girl with boundless energy but she is also bright and so when you can get her to focus (that’s the real trick) she learns quickly. She is going to be used as a hunting dog and so her training is being adjusted slightly to compliment that.
Today we mostly worked on not being such a Buffalo on her leash. We put her on a small pinch collar and she immediately realized I was back there trying to talk to her. When in a free walk she makes the mistake of darting to the end of the lead and correcting herself but she is learning to hold herself back more and more. Her Heel command shaped up pretty fast and we are working on her stopping when I stop and not just when she hits the end of the rope. We also started her Implied Stay and her Come (Here!) command. Her biggest hurtle with that is keeping her four feet on the floor when she reaches me.
She spent some time in the house today and was polite once the novelty wore out. She stayed on Place for 15 minutes. More of that practice tomorrow! This should be a fun week and she will learn fast.

The girls are making some real progress. Ellie has slowly but surely come out of her shell. Her apprehensiveness has made it difficult for her to accept praise until recently and she is taking direction much better now. Lexi has zero trouble accepting praise and her big goals have been to give people some personal space and her biggest toiling point is with Implied Stay. She wants to be with people all the time and she is lost without direction. Both these girls have very soft personalities and that sweetness is easy to praise especially now that Ellie is feeling better.
They average about an hour on Placemat without a mistake. Their leash manners have improved greatly though Ellie still gets distracted by smells now and then. They will need to work in follow ups on their reactivity to other dogs because the dogs here aren’t inspiring that reactivity anymore. But they can improve this habit with guidance once they go home.
These sisters are working so hard and their foundation is getting more and more solid everyday.