Sunday, January 18, 2009

Beginner class #1

Today, after a warmup round of heeling, we learned the following signs:
  • Halt - Sit - Stand
  • Halt - Sit - Down
  • Halt - Sit - Down - Sit
  • Halt - Sit - Walk around
  • Halt - Sit - Down - Walk around
  • Normal pace
  • Fast pace
  • Slow pace
  • Weave once
Lucy pretty much knew them already from her previous courses. However, her big problem has always been sitting at a wide angle and even though it's not a big deduction I'd still like to get her straighter.

We were reminded of the importance of body language in obedience, such as leaning forward when about to start from a stop, and choosing a specific footwork pattern when about to come to a stop.

Lucy's on a restricted diet right now as we try to figure out if she has food allergies, so all she gets for treats is her kibble. For all the trouble Lucy The Walking Stomach gets herself into, there's one good thing about having a chowhound: she's almost as happy to work for kibble as for any other treat. :-)

Homework: Straight sits; refresh her Stand.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds fun! I took beginner rally classes with Mika a couple years ago. They were a lot of fun, though Mika was constantly distracted by the other dogs so we couldn't really do much, all of my energy was spent getting her to focus on me...on the last day though, we were finally in tune to do the final full course.

    Keep it up with the weekly updates! :) I'm sure Lucy will do great!!

    ~Nat

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  2. We tried Rally-O as a way to build Lilly's ring confidence, but it backfired on me in our first serious of classes. That's where she really turned into a dog-reactive dog.

    Our class was in a big metal county building, where CGC, conformation, and obedience classes were also taking place.

    Just too many dogs (including intact show dogs) and too many people and too much noise for my sensitive girl.

    I'm sure Lucy will be a star!

    If it helps, we used ME-TURN and YOU-TURN for those inside and outside loops you have to do.

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  3. Oh that must have been a challenge, trying to keep Mika's attention in that environment! Very sweet of her to give you her all in the last class to end the session on a great note.

    Dang, that truly sucks about what Lilly's rally classes did to her. I had a similar experience in a session that was for helping socialize dogs with people: one of the dogs was a 200-lb mastiff who also had a thing for staring down dogs. Well the mastiff stared down my dog time after time (granted, it was a two-way street) and once even broke his collar while lunging. I credit that session for giving my dog a fear of big dogs which has taken a LOT of time and effort to work through. Sigh.

    Anyway, Lucy doesn't have much trouble ignoring the other dogs, unless there happens to be a big, handsome, macho intact male around... However, apparently one of the rally exercises is to walk past a bowl of treats. THAT will be Lucy's biggest challenge EVER!

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