Sweet Ginger goes home soon. She now knows her stuff and while she can get a little bit nervous still, she now looks to people for direction instead of comfort. It will be important that her owner not comfort her when she gets upset (which is not comforting to Ginger) but instead direct her into a better way of reacting to something. We will be going over how to do this during the go-home lesson. 
Ginger is a very sweet-natured dog who really doesn't want to do anything wrong. She enjoys her collar but often chooses to remain close to her person instead of romping around. She has made many friends while she was here but she often plays with her hackles raised. Just another sign that she is naturally a little bit nervous. She is friendly though and so her nervousness has not put off the other dogs at all. She is a good player. 
I think her owner will be pleased. Ginger is in upkeep mode now and so her owner just has to make obedience her way of life. She is such a people oriented dog that this should be a relatively simple thing. One very important thing is that when Ginger is taken on walks that as soon as she sees another dog that she is suspicious of she be reminded that her job is to Heel. This can be done with the vibration on the coller. This can help keep her reaction from escalating to over-reacting. She is not an unfriendly dog she just needs it to be made clear for her what her job is so that she does not decide for herself that it is her job to bark at strangers. 
I have loved working with Ginger. Bully-type dogs are always so much fun and so clownish. Ginger has made me laugh all week. Good job Ginger!

Well today is Wallace's last day with us. He has made it very far and I am pleased with his progress. He knows his commands and is enjoying the freedom his Dogtra is giving him. He is very sensetive to it and often only needs the vibration to help him make the right decision. 
He is not perfect. He still makes mistakes now and then and sometimes you can see some inner turmoil as he decides whether or not to lay down or come when called. The work that has to be done now falls to his owner. They have to do the upkeep and make sure that the commands he now knows translate into every day life. They do this by using the commands every day in every day scenarios. Making dinner? Hold a Down/Stay. Watching a movie? Placemat. Talking a walk? Heel for 15 minutes then free walk while practicing Recall. If these commands are just party tricks that get brought out rarely he will lose the responsivness he has developed over the last ten days. 
But if his owners are consistent and patient with him and firm about getting what they want then he should do well. He is very cute and likes to tease people into letting him get out of work. But he is also happy to get praise and so he is willing to work. You just have to remember that this is a dog with a sense of humor and so to expect a certain amount of goofiness. I will miss this guy. He is a good natured dog who has been very enjoyable to work with. 

I had a very full day of weekly lessons today so the boarders both had lite days. But I focused most of Ginger's work today on the little things she is still toiling with. She has a very difficult time with Implied Stay. She is 100% convinced that I am going to have the world's greatest adventure without her (10 feet away). She scoots, lays down and army crawls, dramatically flops over then tries to drag herself across the grass with her claws, then she pouts until I ask her to Come. Her Come is either spot on or very sloppy. I am still working on her consistency with that command but she is making steady progress. 
Tomorrow I am focussing all my work time on the boarders as I do not have any weeklies on Sunday or Monday. I plan to work the dogs on their sticky points and also to let them enjoy some extra house time on their Placemats. There won't be any blog tomorrow but Sweet Ginger is making good progress. My goal for her now is to get some better consistency from her. She knows her commands, now I need to make sure she can make it a way of life. 

Wallace had a bit of a boring day today. Saturday is a busy day for me when it comes to weekly lessons so a large chunk of the daylight is dedicated to that. He had a fun bounce around the farm with me and the other dogs in the morning then he had some down time. His workouts later in the afternoon went just fine. He was a bit of a stinker about the Come command once but other than that there were no huge issues. He charmed my little sister who was out working with the horses today. They became fast friends. She tried to get a picture of him but he got so playful that mostly she got pictures of a black and white streak.  
Tomorrow is my favorite day of the week because I have no obligations other than working with the boarders. After church, if it isn't too cold I thought I might walk Wallace to the lake and see if he enjoys water or not. If it is too cold we will just play in the field again. There won't be a blog tomorrow but if he has fun at the lake I will post pictures. Look to Monday to hear more about how Wallace is doing. 

Ginger had an interesting day today. She is halfway through her time with me and she is doing very very well. However, this morning she was acting a little sassy and uninterested in working. I've been pushing them pretty hard these past few days so I opted to give Ginger the morning off. We took a nice free-walk this morning then she ate breakfast and snoozed away the first half of the day. Giving her a leisure morning payed off because this afternoon she was almost perfect in both of her workouts. Like people, sometimes dogs just need to veg out for a while. 
Ginger is enjoying her off-leash freedom with her electronic collar but I am being careful to keep her on-leash obedience sharp as well. There will be times when she needs to be leashed and because leashes can add to a dog's anxiety if they already have a tendency towards nervousness. This is the case with Ginger so it is important she be able to maintain focus while leashed. 
Ginger is such a sweetie. I couldn't be happier with her progress. I look forward to her next 5 days here. 

We have hit the halfway point for Wallace and I couldn't be more pleased with where Wallace is right now in his training. He is responding to most of his commands the majority of the time and when he does make a mistake he is easily corrected. The vibration mode has been sufficient in cueing Wallace when he makes a mistake and I rarely have to nick him. 
He did get a little snarky with me today over the Come command and so he got an extra workout using the long line to ensure I could keep him from rewarding himself by bouncing around instead of coming when called. I would cue him to come with a vibration from the collar and then reel him in using the line. This encouraged him to come immediately instead of dragging his feet and thus he would get a ton of praise. Without the line he was having too much fun and wasn't responding as quickly as I want him to. The idea is that using the long line with his collar will teach him that if he comes immediately when called he gets the best praise. If he flat out refuses to come when called he gets a correction and that usually lights a fire under his pants to hurry up. 
Wallace is doing great. His work ethic is improving and while he might never be as crisp or precise as some smaller breeds his slower, careful obedience suits him just fine. Good job, Wallace!

Ginger surprised me today. I was planning on having her wear her collar to allow her to get used to it while we worked on her obedience and walking past other dogs. What I wasn't expecting was for her to do so well. By the end of today she was enjoying off-leash play time with Ace, my pitbull, and even did some of her obedience off-leash. She responds well to the collar and seemed to really enjoy the freedom it gave her. 
The work is about to get more challenging as we start to work in more distractions for her. She still gets nervous around new animals and situations. She had all the hair standing on the back of her neck as she met Angela the kitty for the first time. She jumped out of her skin when the donkey brayed during her workout. She is very much a city girl. Once her obedience is a bit more reliable and she really knows what she is doing I hope to take her into town for a field trip to really make sure she will adapt to working around cars and people. She will likely always be a little bit nervous but our goal this week is to help her have confidence in her handler and to trust that her handler won't lead her into harms way.
Tomorrow I hope to work more without the leash and to get her Implied Stay a little more solid. She is very much a "pop tart" right now meaning she will lay down immediately on command but then she pops right back up, ready to play. We need to get her some self restraint to stay down while I move away from her. I could not be happier with where Ginger came today. She is doing great and it is only day 3! 

Wallace is doing so well. He wore his remote trainer today for the first time and adapted well to it. I may need to trim a little patch of hair so that the collar points can easily reach his skin because he is so floofy. He responded well to the pager (vibration) setting when I used it as a warning and as a recall cue. The remote had to be set fairly high in order for him to feel the electronic correction but I attribute this to all of that beautiful hair and not to him being very tough. Again, this is why I will probably end up trimming a 1"X1" patch of hair where his collar pack can easily sit. That was I can turn it down a little.
He worked on the 20' leash today and did well. His Heel work is getting better and he is Autositting almost every time now. His Down is pretty good. He is a smarty pants and likes to guess what I am going to ask him next. He isn't always right but he tries hard. When he guesses incorrectly he lays on the cute pretty thick and hams it up big time. He still gets a correction but he doesn't take it personally. As funny as it is most of the time we do need to make sure that he will listen even when he is feeling goofy, which is often.
I hope to have him off the leash by tomorrow evening. He will still get a few on-leash work outs here and there to continue working on cleaning up and polishing his commands but now that he has the general idea on most of them we can start making it harder by also asking him to perform without a physical leash. The work gets tougher for him from here on out but he also gets to enjoy the many freedoms that come with remote trainers. These perks include: off-leash play time with my pack, off-leash potty breaks, and the warm fuzzy feeling of being a good dog.