My pal Savannah goes home tomorrow. I am very pleased with her progress these past couple weeks. Her commands are pretty solid. She only toils with not squirming around while laying down and with staying put at first when she is parked on Placemat. But once she settles she stays nicely. She is a very soft dog and it is easy to hurt her feelings if her confusion or excitement is treated as defiance. That isn't to say she shouldn't be corrected but that if she gets pouty her owners may need to build her back up with some praise after she gets the answer right.
I think she will be happy to be home again with her sister, Penny, and her family. She as worked hard and I think will enjoy getting back to her old routine but it is imperative that her owners incorporate her training into her daily life so that she retains it. That is probably more important than carving out time to practice. Make her work throughout the day just going through the motions so that she understands that she will always need to be ready to listen. This will make her feel more like she has a job and she will look to her people for direction more readily.
I will miss this sweet girl. She has been a good buddy and a delightful house guest. She lives to please her people, that's for sure. If her owners can give her good direction and leadership I think she will impress them with what she has learned and with how well she will settle into adulthood as she grows up a little more.

What a fun day for Savannah. It was a balmy 30-something degrees out and so she accompanied me to the farm all day. She was my helper during lessons and then she enjoyed some off-leash play time.
Her off-leash obedience was fairly clean for her first time. She needed some extra reminders of the rules but her transition was pretty smooth. She definitely enjoyed the freedom during play time.
Right now I would say her two big struggling points are laying down in the snow and Implied Stay with no leash. We will be practicing these points tomorrow as well as taking advantage of some friends coming over for dinner to practice her letting guests in without harassing them too much.
Today was fun. I love the first day of losing the leash. It is so nice to see pups enjoying their collar this way. Good girl, Savannah.

Brrrr...
After limited time outside this frigid weekend we went back to work today. We didn't take our long walk today but we did a lot of indoor practice. Tomorrow we must brave the cold or risk falling behind. She is doing well and still enjoys the work, though corrections sometimes hurt her feelings. She is a sensetive girl and if she gets it wrong it can bum her out. But on that same thread her sensetivity means she takes a very low level and soft correction. We are grateful for her et-300 collar that it is so adjustable that we can set it nice and low for her.
Tomorrow we are going to take a trip out to the farm and work without a leash or rope for the first time. I am looking forward to giving her that extra freedom but I am a little bummed that we won't get to spend more time outside. But it should warm up to the 30's soon and so I hope we get a lot more time outside later in the week.
I hope everyone stayed warm this weekend! We sure didn't venture out much and had a lot of play, cuddle, and practice time indoors.

By day 5 it is my goal to have the dogs where I would want them at the end of a one week Board and Train, more or less. And I am happy to report that that is pretty much where Savannah is. Her only toiling point right now is the Implied Stay. It's getting there. She knows what her job is. But she sometimes just can't help herself and she springs up to join whatever action she feels like she is being deprived of.
The next few days are tricky. Because of the Winter Weather Advisory and the Wind Chill Advisory scheduled for the weekend we are going to limit her outside time. So a lot of practice in the house and training room with quick runs outside for potty and play but we aren't going to be outside for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

I am happy with her progress right now and I am looking forward to her moving on to off leash early next week. It should be fun! We are also going to start incorporating a second dog to her walks to make sure she can keep her composure even when her buddy is walking with her.
We are right where I would want to be for Day 5. Good girl, Savannah.

Savannah had a bit of a down day today with lots of house time. I had a full lesson day and it was super frigid out so I didn't take her on her longer walk today. She is doing fine but argued a little about Down. I am more free tomorrow so we will tackle this again for sure. Her Come command is coming along great. She is still a little sloppy but she knows to Sit when she gets to me and that's a start.
Her Heel work is continuing to improve though she still gets excited by new smells and we lose her focus sometimes. For now I am going to set up a crate for her in the house because it is just too dang cold to leave her in the training room all night.

Savanah had a good day. We went out to the farm and practiced hard at our leash manners. Heel/Autosit was quickly picked up and she was doing better with loose leash walking even when not in a command by the end of the day. She is still distractable and that won't change in 2 weeks but you can already see that she is thinking more about what she is doing which is the first step to self-restraint.
We also worked some more on Implied Stay which is hard for her. She wants to be in the thick of the action and so it is counter intuitive for her to park it while I walk off but she was improving in the afternoon work out.
This evening she spent a few hours with my husband while he tinkered around his office. He usually regards my boarders with polite indifference but he and Savannah have struck up a friendship and so I imagine she will be enjoying Placemat in his office again in the evenings as the week goes on. It's really pretty sweet.
Tomorrow we are going to work on Down and Come along with what we've been doing so far.

A pretty and sweet natured Yellow Lab is here for 2 weeks of advanced training. She is the housemate of Penny who was trained here a few weeks ago. Savvanah is a sensitive but confident dog who should be rewarding to train.
Today we just did the baby basics while we got aquatinted. She is happy about work and enjoys praise. She is distractsble and doesn't have the best self-restraint but certainly not the worst.
She made fast friends with Ace and is respectful of Kylie but you can tell it is her goal to wear Kylie down to playing with her eventually. She has been polite and sweet so far and I am looking forward to making things more challenging for her tomorrow.

We are wrapping things up for Bonnie. She has made great progress and I am pleased with how she has done. She isn't perfect and she still is very much a puppy but she has words now and she has gained a lot of self-restraint.
This weekend we have some extra time with Bonnie and so we will continue her proofing and practice as well as take her go-home video and her glamour shot for the website.
Bonnie is a very big puppy but she is gearing up to be a very nice adult dog with just a little bit more growing up to do first. For now she is enjoying a nylabone she stole from Ace and is relaxing quietly in the living room with the other pups.

Bonnie has now had two full work days at the farm. She has done quite well but gave us some things to work on. While her obedience is great in the fence when she is outside the fence something interesting happens. It's almost like she gets some mile agoraphobia or something. All of her obedience is still great (though she has some strong opinions about laying down in cold snow) except for her Implied Stay. She auto sits, lays down, and sits on command very well but if I tried to walk off from her she clings to me like Velcro. I've worked with her on this and she is improving quickly but she is clearly still nervous about me walking away from her. I wonder if this will happen at her home where she is comfortable or if it is linked to her handler leaving her while she is in an unfamiliar place.
Either way we will continue to work on all of her off-leash obedience to make sure she is reliable when she goes home. She is working very hard and doing a great job.

Keeping it short tonight because the tiny dictators are staging a mutiny about bedtime. Bonnie did fine today. We just worked on more of the same and she is getting sharper by the day (though she is still quite a doof). Right now she is finishing up her first hour on Placemat and she has only needed one correction so far. She is actually falling asleep currently and I am waiting for her to wake up to see if she remembers she is in a command or if she forgets what she is doing. She really seems to enjoy being a house dog even though she still gets a little rowdy sometimes, usually egged on by her buddy, Ace.
Tomorrow she is going out to the farm to see how she does with no leash and no fence. I am excited for her!