Trinity's Love: It's Back To School!

Thursday was our first day back to training in 2 1/2 months. That's a long time for us considering we have been doing one class a week since last May. We started Intro to Competition Obedience for a six week course. We have already taken this class but untill our instructor allows us to move on we need to take it again. Once we do that we will be in the Novice class.

"I love school!"

This week we started back on our basics. The first thing we did was the 'bird feeder'. That is where you take a treat and hold it out to the side of you, then wait until the dog looks at you and not the treat then you click then give it to them. This is also called 'watch me'. Trinity's a fast learner and she picked it up pretty quickly. She knows the fastest way to get the treat is to stare at me.

"What is the fastest way to get out of the bathtub?"

We also did 'Touch'. This involves the dog touching its nose to your palm. This is considered a treat in the ring because you are unable to carry food with you. Trinity knows this one well and was doing it without pawing me or ignoring my hand signal (which she likes to do a lot with this one).

Like this. "I ignore Mommy when she tells me not to do this."

Another exercise we did was 'finish'. This is called 'around' to Trinity. You teach your dog to stand in a heel position at your left side from were ever they are standing. Our instructor in our puppy kindergarten class taught us this and she has been doing it for a year now. All I say is 'around' and point at my left side and she sits next to me in the heeling position. Sometimes this is hard for her in the class because of all the good smelling stuff on the floor. But we are working on that!

It's just like when I open up the fridge. (That's where the cheese lives)

The last thing we did was 'coming when called'. Now, she's usually good at this one. Our instructor in our continuing education class was very impressed by her when she did this. But unfortunately I was to blame with this one. We did a restrained call and she started to run to me but then veered off to see Zach outside the class ring. Opps! It was the very last 10 minuets of class and I knew she was tired and overwhelmed. I should have been closer to her and made sure that she could only see me and not Zach or the other dogs waiting outside for there class to begin. But we did not make the same mistake twice and we set her up for success by doing all of that. She came to me with no problems the next time.