Sweet Sophie goes home tomorrow. She is still very puppy and has a lot of curious energy but she now has a vocabulary and she understands what is expected of her. Her self restraint is so much better than it was and she tries very hard to be good.
She did well going down town but it was overwhelming for her at times but she only made a few mistakes.
I have enjoyed training her and I look forward to my follow ups with her. She is still growing but she will settle in to a very nice and level dog as her owners build on her foundation.
As we wrap up her training I am proud of how far she has come and I will miss the Sophie Comedy Hour every evening.

Unfortunately my schedule changed and I wasn’t able to take Sophie downtown today so I plan to do that tomorrow. Tomorrow we are also going to get a video of her off-leash obedience at the Farm to show to her people when they pick her up.
Today she worked on her obedience off-leash and we pushed her self-restraint with Placemat. We asked her to stay in place for about an hour. She did pretty well but she gets bored and sometimes forgets what her job is. This is mostly due to age and not being used to working all the time. Her self-restraint will improve as she gets used to this daily obedience job. She is still so puppy and the mistakes she makes reflect that. They aren’t defiance. Her mistakes are usually due to an over abundance of enthusiasm. She is a celebrator. That won’t change as she grows up but she will be able to contain herself a little better.
For now she is snoozing on a Placemat with a bone she won during a game with Ace earlier in the day. She has treated it as her trophy since this afternoon.
Sophie is exactly where I expect her to be at this point in her training.

Short blog tonight. Sophie is doing great. I am taking her down town tomorrow to work around major distractions. She did fine today and is finding her rhythm well. However my children are rejecting any idea of bed time and so I am cutting my blogging short tonight in order to wrestle them into their pajamas. More on Sophie tomorrow!

Another good day for Sophie. We did not use her pinch collar once today. She was only on her remote and had great work outs. The pinch collar is only used for teaching and so to get to move on from it means we have officially moved from the teaching phase to the practice and proofing phase of training.
She is still very puppy and will pick up literally anything off the ground but she puts it back down as soon as she is told to. She has quite the oral fixation but it will lesson with age, most likely.
She is doing great so far. I plan to spend this week proofing her new skills and making things more difficult and move towards obedience being her way of life and not just something we practice every day. This is where her people will pick up when she goes home. For now she is snoring in her crate as she sleeps contorted like a pretzel. It doesn’t look comfy but she is sound asleep so maybe she knows something I don’t!

Sophie enjoyed some time off-leash today! We worked purely on recall and kept it very light hearted and silly. She had a lot of fun bouncing around and only needed a correction for ignoring the Come command once. We didn’t do any harder stuff today off-leash but her on-leash obedience went fine.
Tomorrow is a busy day for me and so Sophie is going to get a day to play and relax. I won’t be posting a blog on Sunday so look to Monday for her next update. She had a blast today and it was a lot of fun watching her play.

Sophie had a major breakthrough today. She had really been toiling with the Down command and was really not understanding how to get the answer right. Finally, after days of work and correction and coaxing she finally started laying down on command with no help or hints or corrections. She worked very hard and I am proud of her.
She got to go out to the farm yesterday and she had a lot of fun. Her recall is very close to being reliable enough for me to take the leash off but she isn’t quite there. Hopefully by Monday we will be able to take the leash off and really let her enjoy some freedom. Tomorrow we are going back out on the 30’ leash to work on Recall as well as everything else with lots of potential for mistakes. She is making smooth progress and now that she is getting Down better she is right on track to be off-leash when I want her to be. She is a good little worker and has such a good sense of humor. Everything is a game!

Sweet Sophie is coming right along. She still needs her leash but we are using her remote collar more and more. The only thing she still seems a little lost about is the Down command. She seems to understand the word but isn't sure how to get the answer right so she either feigns deafness or simply stares away from me hoping I will let her off the hook. We will continue working on it until she has more confidence with it.

She makes mistakes, of course, but she is getting cleaner and cleaner with her commands. I hope to be able to transition her to off-leash this weekend or early next week. She has also done pretty well with the chickens. She ignores the birds who are fat and lazy (and thus less interesting). I have a young hen who is pretty active still and so when she runs around playing it is difficult for Sophie not to chase but a tap from her remote collar reminds her to ignore them. I wouldn't trust her unsupervised yet but she is not determined to play with them which is very promising. Sophie's chasing instincts get woken up with my flighty hen runs around acting like a dog toy and we can't fault her for that.

Tomorrow we are spending the day at the farm working and playing on our long-line. The long-line is a 30 foot leash that lets us practice the Come command in a more realistic way without risking taking the leash off prematurely. So far so good for little Sophie.

We got going with the harder work today and Sophie did well. She got Heel almost immediately and Autosit is coming along well. We also introduced Implied Stay and Come today and she needs more practice but seems to understand. She worked hard today and is enjoying the toys she pilfered from Ace’s pile.

She has become good friends with Ace and enjoys playing with him. Kylie is a bit too old to enjoy playing with a puppy but Sophie enjoys plodding along behind her in the yard playing follow the leader.

Sophie will be working on pretty much the same foundational stuff tomorrow and we will start conditioning her around the chickens nowthat she is starting to understand the rules. For now it is almost bed time so we are going to have our last chance potty break. She is a smart girl and seems to enjoy the work though she is still acting a little shy. We will see if she puts up more road blocks when she feels more at home.

Sophie is a delightful doodle who is here for 2 weeks of obedience training. She is a young and impulsive girl who doesn’t have much self restraint yet. I think she will gain some self control over the course of this package but she will still be very much a puppy when she goes home.
Today we did very basic leash manners. Basically we covered loose leash walking and sitting when we stop. We also worked on the idea of coming when called and also being calm in the house. We kept it pretty low key today so she could settle in and make friends with the other dogs here.
Tomorrow the real work starts and we will start pushing the formal obedience training full tilt. Doodles are always fun to train so I look forward to seeing her learn. For now she is snoozing in her kennel. Welcome Sophie!