Sunday, July 20, 2014

Teaching Middle-Aged Dogs New Tricks, Part Two

Ginger the Wonder Dog and I started the second dog training class last week. So far, so good, by which I mean I didn't drop anything on her head during the first class.

The other dogs are bigger, which didn't stop Ginger from growling at them. One of the dogs lives just two houses down from me. I've talked to her owner at least three times over the past few years, but neither one of us recognized the other. The owner has a pretty unusual first name, though, so I took the conversational leap of getting her to confirm she lived on my street. In our defense, I think every time we've spoken it's been dark outside, so I'm not sure I've ever gotten a good look at her face before. Now I'll probably still forget her face, but at least I know what her dog looks like.

We're supposed to be working on extending our three minute down-stay into a ten minute down-stay with distractions. Since our three minute down-stay is more like a three second down-stay-get-up-wander-around-lie-down-again, this might be a little difficult. I'd say we're making progress on it, but for the last two days every time I've asked Ginger to do anything at all she's just wandered off. We'll get there...


No comments: