This was the first week dogs were allowed in class. Curtis, Emma, and I were the last ones to arrive. Doxies were on one side, the big dogs on the other. We were spread out in a wide circle to give each other room. People had chairs, dogs had their beds.
Emma stuck close, but didn't whimper and try to climb up our legs. Emma is basically afraid of other dogs.
We practiced the sit and stand; our teacher walked around checking our progress and giving tips. The dogs settled down pretty quickly, I thought anyway, after the initial arrival. They all had to look at each other. Rosa told everyone she was there, and generally announced her opinions. The boxer, Reggie, had to go behind the door, because he wanted Leo's attention. But they all settled down.
Rosa will occasionally tell everyone what's what. Randomly it seems.
Tessie is wiggly. She wanted to play with everyone taking Rob for a ride a few times. It was really cute at one point where Tessie saw Curtis with treats: Tessie looked at him, "Ok, I'll do tricks for you now!"
We can say "sit" and "stand" now. But only once.
Then we did "recall" and "restrained recall" where one of us holds Emma while the other calls her name. This worked really well, except she went back to Curtis without him calling her because she loves him best.
Then we practiced walking on a loose leash. This was difficult because the room was small and Emma wanted to be near Curtis. So if Curtis was close to us she didn't pull on the leash. Basically when Emma pulls on the leash, we're supposed to stop and walk back to that point and click and treat when she turns to come back.
We also worked on attention which we had before we started clicker class, because now she looks at the clicker or the treat hand. We're supposed to click and treat when we catch her looking at us. Hopefully, this will improve.
We all practiced "settle." Emma liked "settle" in class because she was protected from the other dogs between her humans.
Next we're to work on handling her: touching her toes, ears, etc, to get her used to be handled. She doesn't mind being handled.
The teacher demonstrated how to modify behavior with the clicker. She had the poodle, Frazier, touch the stick with her nose. Frazier sat and then lied down thinking that's what was wanted. But if Frazier even accidently touched the stick, the teacher clicked and rewarded.
So we have homework, we'll see how that loose leash walking goes ...
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We're not doing very well. Emma lunges at the treat; she sits on command but as soon as she knows the treat is there or we're walking, she stands; eye contact is down to zero (she's focused on those treats); and walking on a loose leash is a joke. She still does well with "settle", however, she flies into the bed so fast (to get that all important treat) she's almost flipped her bed. Sigh. It's gotta get better.
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