Today was day 1 of Sarge Boot Camp. I signed us up for an obedience class at Red River North Dog Obedience Club. I was a bit nervous about taking the dog into a situation where there are going to be many other dogs that are obviously not all that well behaved. Given that my main concern with the Sarge is how he acts around smaller animals this probably wasn’t the best situation to walk in to…never the less, we went!
The class cost me $40.00 for 5 weeks of once a week one hour training classes. I went in to this class with the attitude that it’s as much for me as it is for the dog. I’m here to learn some techniques for training the Sarge, some way to keep his attention and get him to respond better to me instantly no matter what else has his focus at the time.
We walk in to this building and there are people with their dogs right at the door…generally not a good idea. The Sarge gets all hot and bothered seeing these new dogs…he gets so god damn excited. He doesn’t growl, bark or otherwise act aggressive…but he clearly wants to run right over to every dog and “play”. I told him to sit and he did…but it’s like an antsy kid…he sits, kinda dances around and keeps looking up at me for the O.K. to run loose. It was hot in there…hotter than the fires of hell and eternal damnation. It didn’t take me very long at all to start sweating bullets and I can’t imagine the dog was comfortable at all. The added heat to the environment could not have been conducive to a good training environment.
The initial lessons were very simplistic. Teaching you how to “properly” walk the dog and the “focus” ideas are the ones that I’ll find the most useful from this first session. I had decided on Friday when he damn near killed the cat that we’d work on some “alpha male” walking technique. I assumed it would be the dog walking behind me the instructor at the class told us to have the dog walk even with our inseam. So the first lesson was to have us all walk around in a big circle with the dog next to us. This was a bit difficult for the Sarge, there were far too many distractions going on. It took a bit of effort to keep him going in the proper direction and not try to go “play” with other dogs or people. The instructor would have us make a lap or two around the room, then stop and have the dog sit. This was no problem for the Sarge, as soon as we stopped and I told him to sit and he sat right down. Some people had a lot of problems with this part of it.
After the walk and sit deal we were to do the “down” thing. Again, like with sit, this was something the Sarge is very familiar with. Everyone was doing it and the instructor walked over to me and asked if he could do it. I looked at the Sarge said “down” and boom he’s down. They also wanted us to do “stay”. I looked at the Sarge, he looked at me..we both kinda shrugged…I told him to stay and he stayed. We also did the “focus” command. This is something I’d done a couple of times with him but never really worked on. It took him a few tries and he was doing it O.K. clearly he’s only looking at the treat. Hopefully we can get this one worked out.
The Sarge has “sit” “stay” “down” worked out pretty well. It’s the walking and focus commands that he needs help with. I think if we can get those hammered out pretty good he’ll be on the ball with everything else. I -really- need to do something about his excitement level when he is around new people or other animals…I’m not sure how to handle this at all.