WTH! Training

Last night we had our usual obedience class. We showed up pretty early, chilled in the car for a bit, then went in and started warming up outside then inside the ring. I told our instructor, Laurie, about the match last weekend, and that while I was proud of Leo holding his sit, he had trouble with the rally signs. She was kind enough to set a few out in the middle of the ring and we focused our warm up on being able to serpentine in and out of them, alternating with Leo or I closest to the signs, halts at the signs, etc. His attention was good and he barely gave them a glance. Apparently in our "normal" setting the signs are a non-issue.

When the rest of the class started to show up, Laurie got us going by heeling around the ring. Almost immediately I started having problems with Leo. He was planting his feet and refusing to move. Tightening the leash did nothing but make him more resistant. I stopped and had to let other class members heel by us multiple times and, essentially, we didn't heel at all for the distance we were able to make it around the ring. After several attempts to correct this and him planting his feet and me starting to sweat and struggling to figure out what was going on, we moved on to other things. Laurie called out to "down our dogs." Leo wouldn't down. Highly unusual. The crazy thing here is that during our warm-up time before class officially started, he displayed none of these behaviors. He was working hard, smiling, and acting like my partner.

So after a bunch of other stuff and me finally sitting on the ground trying to get him to even down, Laurie's instructor who was observing our class came over to me. She reminded me that if I give him a command, I apply pressure with the leash, and then I "let it go" (Translation: Don't make him do what I asked.), the next time he's resist more. So then I tried to put him into a down and he squealed! Of course you think people figure you're abusing your dog when you're not. Anyway, we weren't having success so I left the ring.

I got our dumbell and we sat outside the ring and worked on "take it" and "hold it." That was going well enough although Leo seemed distracted and still had stubborn moments. Then we got up and moved on to heeling up and down the front of the ring, casual "fronts" and just being happy working. It took about 25 minutes but we finally got to go back in the ring and join our class for recalls and the rest of class. He wasn't as close and precises in heeling as he can be, but he wasn't terrible and he held his stays remarkably well the rest of class.

Boy, made me work for it though. I went home tired.